The Winchester Pact
by Neneithel
Summary: Set in Season 12, a long story in which Sam, Dean and Castiel try to learn from past mistakes and make living together much easier.
1. Chapter 1

_The Winchester Pact._

_Chapter 1._

As Sam put down the groceries, he nodded to Dean, who was holding a beer bottle in one hand and, with the other, dabbing a damp cloth to a cut and bruised left eye.

"What happened to your eye?" he said,

"The blunt end of an angel blade." said Dean, "Which is not as blunt as you'd think." He put down the half empty bottle.

"Our angel, or someone else?" said Sam, wondering how much had gone wrong during his half hour food run.

"Cas and I were practicing and he got a little carried away." said Dean, without anger, "My fault. I should have toned down the trash talk."

"For thousands of years, Cas has been in complete control of his temper and five minutes sparring with you has him losing control?"

Dean shrugged, "I admit, I may be a bad influence."

"Is he still here?" said Sam.

Dean waved in the direction of the door. "Yeah, he's around."

"How angry?"

Dean grinned. "He's fine, I'm fine, everybody's fine."

"Yeah, you look fine."

"It could have been a lot worse." said Dean.

"He could have killed you."

"He wasn't trying to kill me. He just wanted to shut me up. You should be able to relate." Dean prodded at the bruise over his eye. "He's got some force in his right arm."

"He's an angel."

"Sometimes I almost miss the mark of Cain. At least with that, it was a more even fight."

"What did you say to him?"

"I don't know. Stuff." He prodded at his eye again. "Does it matter?"

"Why didn't Cas heal the damage?" said Sam.

Dean pointed at Sam. "Don't give him a hard time over this. It was an accident."

"I get that." said Sam, "Why couldn't he heal it?"

"I could." said Cas, as he walked into the kitchen, "He wouldn't let me."

Sam looked at Dean, "Idiot."

"I was asking for it." said Dean. He turned to Castiel. "Cas, everything I said was crap. I didn't mean a word of it. I apologise." He tossed the cloth into the sink.

Cas went over to Dean and reached out his hand. "Let me heal that."

Dean recoiled. "No. You're not our first aid kit. Besides, I need the reminder not to piss you off like that."

Sam looked from one to the other, seeing the angel's guilt and the dozen emotions his brother was trying so hard to hide. Sam knew this had nothing to do with Cas. He was accustomed to Dean's habit of self-harm by proxy.

"Let him heal it." said Sam, "Can't you see that looking at it will keep making him feel bad about it? Or is this revenge because he got past your guard?"

Dean glared at him. "Don't be stupid." He nodded to Castiel. "Do what you like." he said, "I don't care."

Cas reached out and touched Dean's forehead. The eye was immediately healed. Cas frowned slightly.

"Thanks, Cas." said Sam, looking meaningfully at Dean.

"Yeah, thanks." said Dean. He stood. "Are we done here, Sam? I have stuff to do."

"You want bacon?" said Sam.

"Always." said Dean, "I'll be in the garage."

When Dean had gone, Sam turned to Castiel. "This is not your fault."

"I overreacted." said Cas.

"What did he say?" said Sam.

Castiel sat down. He spoke very quietly. "Sam, he said what he had to say to provoke me. The truth is, he wanted me to hit him."

"I know. He does that." said Sam.

"And I know that too, so I should have known better,"

"You're only human." said Sam, then he realised how stupid that sounded, "I mean ... "

Castiel smiled. "Not really. I have no excuse. I should be in control of my anger. I have withstood torture. I should be able to resist the urge to hit my best friend in the face with my angel blade."

"You hit him with the right end." said Sam.

"You would have been a fine defence lawyer." said Cas,

Sam started to prepare breakfast. "Don't disappear." he said.

"I wasn't going to." said Castiel, "What do you think we should do?"

Sam sighed. There were no easy answers. This time, Dean had picked a fight with someone who loved him. Next time, it might be a pack of werewolves or a gang of ghouls. "I'll talk to him," he said, "See how much he lies to me. Maybe try to reason with him a little."

"I should have refused to fight with him. He said he needed the practice."

"I told you, this is not your fault." said Sam.

"If I had refused the fight ... "

"He'd be fighting the wall or one of the cars or a bar full of drunks." said Sam. He said it again, knowing how hard it was for the angel to believe it. "This is not your fault. He knows exactly how to push all our buttons. It could just as easily have been me that hit him." He looked at the bacon in the pan. "Are you eating?"

Cas shook his head. "No thanks."

Sam piled high a burger bun with bacon and said, "I'll take this to him. He never hits anyone offering food."

"Tell him I'm sorry." said Cas.

"Sorry for what?" said Sam, "I told you, this is all on him."

"All of it? If I knew how to fix the underlying problem ... "

"I don't know if it can be fixed." said Sam.

"But we have to try," said Cas.

"Yeah, we have to try and keep trying and if there is a way, we'll find it, but you need to remember that you are not responsible for this."

"And so do you." said Cas, "So stop blaming yourself."

Sam smiled. "Am I that transparent?"

"No," said Castiel, "I am just fluent in what Winchesters don't say."


	2. Chapter 2

_Chapter 2._

Sam found Dean carefully grooming an already perfect Impala. "Bacon." he said, holding out the plate.

Dean took it. "Thanks." he said.

Sam said nothing. He looked at the car.

"She's looking good, isn't she?" said Dean.

"She always does." said Sam.

Dean took a large bite of his breakfast and nodded his approval. "Good bacon." he said. He glanced at Sam, then quickly away. "I'm okay." he said.

"Yeah." said Sam.

"Is Cas okay?" said Dean.

"Yeah." said Sam, "Why fight with someone who could kick your ass?"

Dean smiled. "No point in fighting with someone who can't. You improve by fighting people better than you."

"And the only one better than you is a powerful angel?" said Sam.

"Can you name another?" said Dean, "He said I use an angel blade better than some angels do." It wasn't bragging, it was fact. He was very capable with an angel blade.

Cautiously, Sam began, "Can we ... "

"No. Let's not."

"I just want to ... "

"Yeah, I know." said Dean, not without sympathy.

"He says you provoked him."

"I told you that." said Dean.

"Deliberately." said Sam.

"He's over-sensitive." said Dean, "You should probably go check on him. He tends to go off and sulk."

"He's in the kitchen." said Sam.

"Oh. Good." said Dean.

"Worrying about you."

"Doesn't he have more cosmically significant matters to worry about?" said Dean.

"Apparently not." said Sam, trying to walk the fine line between being shoved out of the room and enabling the unhealthy silence.

"Tell him I'm fine." said Dean, "Tell him everything is fine."

"I would, but everything isn't fine and I'm not a good enough liar ... "

"Now you're just being modest." said Dean. He sat on the hood of the car, putting the bun down beside him. He looked into his brother's eyes and said, "I'm not saying everything is perfect. Our fine is way below the world's catastrophic. We function. We survive. We deal. Seriously, Sam, anyone else, dealing with any single thing we've handled in the past decade ... "

"I know. They'd be destroyed, broken." said Sam.

"Whereas you are a strong, capable, well-adjusted lunatic and I ... "

"You are a high-functioning alcoholic with a tendency to pick fights with angels."

"I'm not an alcoholic." said Dean.

"No?"

"Absolutely not. I'm just a rational human being with unhealthy coping mechanisms involving large quantities of alcohol."

"Are you hearing that much of a distinction there?" said Sam.

Dean stared at the distant ceiling for a while and then said, "Yeah. It's different."

Sam began to pace. There were many questions he wanted to ask and a few accusations he wanted to make and he knew that Dean was ready to deflect all of them, because they were brothers and had barely been out of each other's sight in all the long years of playing this stupid game. Dean knew his thoughts before he had them. He knew Dean's deep, deep fear of speaking aloud the pain he pretended not to feel, especially to Sam, who was, in Dean's head, forever about nine years old.

"You should go talk to Cas." said Dean.

"Right now, I'd rather talk to you." said Sam.

"You'll hurt his feelings." said Dean with a faint smile.

"Like you did?" said Sam.

Dean almost flinched at that. Guilt flickered in his eyes. "Yeah, like I did." he said.

"Whatever's going on with you, it must be pretty bad if it was worth doing that to Cas." said Sam. Guilt was always the easiest route to Dean's heart, though he hated to use it.

Dean sighed. "You are not going to let this go, are you?"

"I think we need to discuss it." said Sam.

"I think we need to discuss the mess in your head sometime." said Dean.

"Fine." said Sam, "Any time you like, after we have dealt with your issues."

"My issues are not the kind that can be dealt with." said Dean.

"Well. that's an admission that they exist. Let's start there."

"I'm not denying my head is screwed." said Dean, "But since it doesn't really interfere with my life, I'd rather talk about something we can fix, like the fact you're a worse basket case than I am."

"I'm not the one getting Cas to beat me up." said Sam.

"Cas is okay." said Dean. He seemed to be trying to reassure himself as much as Sam.

"Nobody in this bunker is okay." said Sam.

Dean stood. He walked over to his toolbox and moved it a few inches. He looked up as if surprised to find Sam still there. "Check on Cas." he said.

"Okay, I will, but at some point, we need to address the problem."

"And we will." said Dean, in a tone that suggested he had no intention of ever considering the possibility again.

"And until we do, no fighting with the angel."

"Whatever." said Dean.

"I'm gonna give you some time." said Sam, "I'm not about to forget about this, I'm giving you time to think about it and to think about us."

"Us who?" said Dean.

"Us, me, you and Cas." said Sam, "You know, that little team you trust to stave off apocalypses ... "

"Or is that apocalypsi?" said Dean with a cheeky grin.

"... But don't trust enough to tell them how you feel." said Sam, ignoring the attempted distraction.

"You know how I feel." said Dean, "I feel like crap. Safe bet, every single day."

It was too honest, too accurate and it took Sam by surprise. He had been about to walk out and return to the kitchen, but he felt as if the right approach, even the right word, might finally convince Dean to say more. Of course, saying the wrong thing at this point would send Dean back into that armoured shell, impervious to nuclear warheads.

Dean noticed the hesitation and read it instantly. "Oh Hell." he said.

"Yeah." said Sam.

They looked at each other in awkward silence. After a brief eternity of endless seconds, Dean said, "If you're gonna stick around, check the pressure on that tyre there."

Sam obeyed, thankful that he had not been sent away. "It's good." he said.

"Good." said Dean, "Always good to check this stuff. You never know when our lives could depend on the right pressure. You have to keep a grip on the road." His eyes never met Sam's. They stared at the car. Only the slight tension in his right hand showed his deep discomfort, but to Sam, such a small sign was an essay on his brother's state of mind.

Sam let the silence take over again. He wanted to break it, to remind Dean that he had just admitted things weren't great, but Dean was hovering between, "I'm fine." and "Help me, Sammy." and Sam had no intention of pushing him towards fake fine.

The car stood between them, as always, their anchor and their security. Dean put his hand on her roof and Sam wiped imaginary dust from the door. He couldn't remember a time when Dean and the Impala had not been his definition of home.

Suddenly, Dean looked at him, meeting his eyes. He grinned. "You know, she's in better shape now than when Dad bought her."

"She has a better mechanic." said Sam, "You know everything Dad knew and all that stuff you got from Bobby."

Dean's smile broadened. "I am a great mechanic." he said.

"And so modest." said Sam.

"Hey, that is being modest!" said Dean, his eyes transmitting his thanks for the easy way back to banter and away from vulnerability.

Sam saw the window of opportunity closing and he said quietly, "All the time, huh?"

Dean backed away from the car, seeming to shrink as he did so. For a moment, he seemed about to go for another joke, but then, as if losing a battle, he nodded, looked down at the ground and said, "Yeah, all the damn time."

"Talk to me." said Sam.

"What, you're short of stuff to lose sleep over?" said Dean.

"Do you think I don't lose sleep over your problems just because you don't talk about them?" said Sam.

"I think you need to get a life." said Dean.

"Wow." said Sam, "That's just a little ironic, coming from someone who uses hunting as a way to put off ever engaging with life or other people."

"I engage!" said Dean.

"You kill monsters. That's the only engagement you do."

"I save people. If that's not engaging, what is?"

"When did you last feel good, Dean?" said Sam.

Dean shrugged.

"This year? Last year? This decade?"

"Feeling good is overrated. I'll take feeling useful every time."

"I don't think you have any idea how much I need to help you." said Sam.

Dean shook his head. "Sam, I do know. It's just ... It can't be your job to fix me, because any attempt to fix me will fail, because I can't be fixed and you're a damn Winchester, so when you fail to do the impossible, that becomes a burden you can't live with ... and you also can't die, because that would be selfish and cowardly and too easy. So you live with the stuff you can't live with and you go slowly frickin' insane and ... " he stopped talking and looked at Sam for a moment with a flicker of hope that he might have stopped listening, "... And I can't do that to you, Sammy."

"I'm not Sammy anymore." said Sam, "I'm an adult. I'm just a few short years younger than you and I've been to Hell and back."

"And you are twice as strong as I can ever be and you are everything I wish I could be, but the only thing in the world that I still care about is keeping you safe and that includes keeping you safe from the darkness I am keeping up here." Dean tapped his forehead.

"The only thing I care about is getting you out of that darkness." said Sam.

"Can't be done." said Dean.

"You're forgetting something." said Sam, "I'm a damn Winchester."


	3. Chapter 3

_Chapter 3._

Alone in the garage, Dean ate his meal and then paced along what he thought of as his collection of vehicles. None of them meant as much to him as the Impala, but he liked them all. One day, he might sell them, but not yet.

In another life, he might have been happy as a mechanic. He had once considered it a possibility for this life, as soon as the thing that had killed his mother was consigned to Hell. After all, their time as hunters was "only temporary" and would end then. He believed that his father had believed that when he said it, believed that there was a future ahead of them where his two sons could grow up normal. Dean had believed it, for a while, but by his late teens, he had known that it was a false hope. He had never told his father that. Protecting those close to him was an instinct that predated his mother's death.

All the vehicles were shiny and as they should be. There was, if he were honest, nothing he needed to do in the garage and he acknowledged in the privacy of his own mind that he was just avoiding Sam and Cas. They wanted to talk and he wanted them to forget the events of the morning.

Cas had a right to be angry. In fact, Cas had also had a perfect right to hit him. The things he had said were cruel and untrue and intended to hurt, but he had only wanted to provoke the blow, not to make Cas doubt their friendship. Purgatory had provided endless opportunities to be bludgeoned out of his self-pity and sometimes he forgot that things were more complicated in this world.

Had Cas intended to yell at him, call him names, offer counter accusations that struck as hard and as deep as the unpardonable things he had said, he would not have avoided the encounter. He was no coward and he certainly had it coming. But Cas had looked at him with that odd mixture of puzzlement and pity and he knew that the angel would want to talk about why he needed injury and what inner wound he wanted to be distracted from.

He wasn't even sure he knew the reason himself. He just knew that there were days when he needed to be active, to be hunting or to be hurt, just so he could get his mind off the pain within. He drove too fast, drank too much, yelled at Sam or whispered harsh words to Cas, because anything was better than being alone with his thoughts and that gaping chasm where his heart used to be.

Sam understood him too well and Cas understood too little. Sam could see that he was driven by pain and fear and he could guess at the specifics, worryingly, perhaps more than he himself could. Castiel was still quite new to human emotions and where Sam would see the reason behind the barbs and dismiss the actual words as irrelevant, Cas had a tendency to take them at face value. He had seen the words hit home. He had seen the look of betrayal and hurt in Castiel's face and when the angel blade had hit him, it came as a relief. Cas was angry and in Dean's mind, that meant that at least Cas was not broken. If he were angry at the injustice of the remarks, clearly he did not believe they were justified. Clearly. Except that Dean knew that sometimes, Castiel heard a lot of subtext and not the kind the Supernatural fans went in for.

He knew what Sam was hoping he would do. It was what he should do. He should go now, before things got more complicated and say to Cas, "I screwed up and I hurt you and I'm sorry. It's nothing to do with you. I'm just a mess right now and making you lash out made me feel like I could control the situation better than I actually can and I don't need to talk about it and I don't need help from either of you. I just need you to forgive me and let me work through this on my own."

Yeah, that last part wasn't going to work. Cas and Sam shared a messiah complex and the more he told them to leave him alone, the less likely they would be to agree. They wanted to save him from himself. They wanted to heal him, as if what he had been through and what lay ahead could be healed with group hugs and heartfelt chats and journals with flowers on the cover. He'd be healed by death ... final death ... maybe.

His real, actual plan was not to work through anything, because he had no chance of doing that. It was to recalibrate normal and drag his tortured existence to a point where he could convincingly fake a level of okayness that would ease the anxiety of his brothers, chosen and blood and make it possible for them to continue as a family.

He knew it was possible. He had been doing it all his life, from his earliest, "I'm fine, Dad." to his current lies and deceptions. His performance was generally Oscar-worthy and he thought he fooled even Sam a lot of the time. He was a good liar. It was one of his best qualities. It was his duty as Sam's big brother. If there is no okay, no fine, no happy, a good brother will learn to fake them convincingly.

Usually, he could do it right away, walk in there and make them believe all was well. Today, though, he just didn't have what it took. He needed to get out and just not be a Winchester for a while. Being Dean Winchester was hard work and it hurt. Right now, the urge to go to Sam and Cas and say, "I need help. I hurt!" was so strong that he didn't trust himself to be anywhere near them. He walked back to the Impala and stroked her door. "Take me away from all this." he said.


	4. Chapter 4

_Chapter 4._

"I made coffee." said Cas when Sam got back to the kitchen. He put a mug down in front of Sam.

"Thanks." said Sam.

"You're not showing any bruises, so I'm assuming it went reasonably well." said Cas.

"I honestly don't know." said Sam.

"Should I go and talk to him?"

Sam picked up the mug of coffee and took a sip. "Probably a bad idea. Give him space." he said at last, "Let's sit down and talk about how you're doing."

They both sat and Cas smiled. "You remember that I'm an angel, right?"

"Yeah, wings, halo, harp, gotcha."

"I don't have a harp." said Cas.

"No, I know." said Sam.

"And the wings come and go."

"I know that too."

"But what I do have, always, is the mind of an angel. You act as if I can be hurt by human words or actions. I can't. I am old and I am powerful and I have a very different perspective on things."

"You hit Dean in the face with an angel blade because something he said hurt you so much." said Sam.

Cas picked up his own coffee and swigged it. He stared into the mug, swirling the coffee around. He said nothing.

"And you won't tell me what he said." said Sam.

"What would be the point?" said Cas.

"What would be the harm?"

Cas put the mug down. He looked slowly around the room. "He said a lot of things." he said eventually.

"Such as?" said Sam.

"Such as that I am only your friend when it suits me, that I pretend to care about the two of you, but the moment you need something from me, I vanish."

"He said that?"

"More than once, in slightly different ways." said Castiel.

"Now I want to hit him." said Sam.

"He apologised. He said it wasn't true. You heard him." said Cas, not sounding remotely like someone who knew it wasn't true.

"Of course it wasn't true." said Sam, "We never had a better friend and he knows that. Hell, he's said that."

"Yes. He's said that too." said Cas. For an ancient being, unable to be hurt by human words, he looked and sounded pretty crushed.

"Cas, through it all, even when everything fell apart and we didn't know if you'd ever be properly you again, Dean believed in you. He believed in your friendship."

Cas looked at him, his eyes immeasurably sad. "He said it to provoke me. I know that. But ... "

"But?" Sam prompted.

"The words ... the thoughts ... They came from somewhere."

Sam's heart sank. Dean had an unerring ability to piss people off and when he wanted a reaction, he knew exactly how to get it. The same empathy that made Sam so good at winning people's trust made Dean a master at hitting them right where it hurt. Against demons, his perfectly aimed sarcasm was a great weapon, but against a friend, especially one like Cas, who felt unworthy of his love, the ability to spot a chink in the armour and send an arrow to the heart was disastrous.

"Dean is a jerk." he said.

Cas did not reply. His lips tried to smile. His eyes seemed to shine with unshed tears.

"Dean is a fool." said Sam.

"I'm okay." said Cas, sounding, for a moment, far too like Dean.

"After all you've done for us, all the sacrifices you've made for us ... "

"All the times I let you down, lied to you, ignored your wise counsel ... " said Cas.

"You've died for us, more than once." said Sam.

"He had a reason to say what he said." said Cas.

"He wanted you to hit him."

"The thoughts were in his head. Things like that don't come from nowhere."

Sam wanted to drag Dean into the kitchen and show him what he had done. He wanted him to see the look in the angel's eyes, the pain in his best friend's face. He knew, though, that Dean had wanted to be hit so that the physical pain would distract for a moment from the pain within. Before he had lashed out verbally at Cas, trying to force Cas to lash out physically at him, the pain he was feeling must have been immense. Sam knew that if anyone else had spoken to Cas like that, Dean would have left footprints on their face.

"He didn't mean it." he said to Cas, "Not one word of it."

Cas stood and walked over to Sam. "Winchesters are hard work."

"We are." Sam agreed, "And angels are not entirely uncomplicated."

"That's true." said Cas.

"Look, I'm sorry and so is he. I know he feels terrible about what he said. You know what Dean's like. His brain gets derailed and his mouth makes all kinds of mistakes, all because it's easier than being honest about what's really troubling him."

"Sometimes I wish he could be more like you." said Cas.

"Like me how?" said Sam.

"The way you hide from what's troubling you, by finding someone to take care of, someone to worry about. I mean, it's not really a great way of dealing with deep emotional wounds, but it beats starting fights with your friends."

"If it helps, the main reason why he picked you to fight with is that he trusts you to still be friends with him after."

Cas smiled and raised an eyebrow.

"What?" said Sam.

"Hard work, always." said Cas. He put his hand on Sam's shoulder for a moment and then stepped back, seemingly aware that he was making Sam feel awkward. "You're good, Sam. Half the time, I don't even know you're doing it and then suddenly I see it. But then, you have been doing it for a very long time. Dean buries the pain and pours alcohol over it until it passes out for a while. You just put yours aside, until you've dealt with the next crisis, which feels healthier, but really isn't, because you're always able to find another crisis and another reason to delay any kind of resolution, even if you have to borrow one from somebody else."

Sometimes, those blue eyes seemed to look right into his soul and Sam was never comfortable with that. "I'm fine." he said automatically. He and Cas smiled the same rueful smile at the same time. "Okay," he said, "Dean and I are a mess."

"Yes." said Cas.

"But so are you. You're not just an angel. You're the only angel who has any capacity to think for himself. You are something special and I can never get over the fact that you're our friend, our brother. We've done nothing to deserve that and little to reward it. We are lucky ... blessed, to have you in our lives at all and my jerk brother says a few completely false things and you're beating yourself up about it and believing every stupid thing he said."

"He spoke with conviction."

"He always does, when he's lying through his teeth." said Sam.

"So you never doubt the sincerity of my friendship?" said Cas.

Sam tried not to laugh. "Cas, you're not a great liar."

"I have deceived angels." said Cas, all wounded pride.

"Fish in a barrel." said Sam.

"Sometimes, even I doubt my sincerity." said Cas.

"Because Naomi messed with your head." said Sam.

"Exactly. Maybe I am everything Dean said I was and I just don't know it."

Sam stood up. "Okay. I think I have to punch him now."

"Why?" said Cas.

"Because he knows you don't deserve this crap."

"Or maybe he knows I do." said Cas, "In any case, aren't we supposed to be finding ways to stop him getting hit in the face?"

"That's a good point." said Sam.

"I thought so." said Cas.

"Even when he's not in the room, he can make us want to hit him."

"He does have a talent for it." said Cas, "You know, when I was sent to rescue him from Hell, I was expecting awe and gratitude. You know what I got? A knife to the heart and a refusal to believe I was an angel."

"Dean doesn't really do awe." said Sam.

"Sometimes I wonder why I like him so much." said Cas.

"Yeah, me too." said Sam.

There was a long silence. Finally, Cas said, "If I could give him peace and heal those wounds that daily afflict him, I would do it, even if the cost were my life and everything else I have ever called mine."

"I know you would." said Sam, "So would I."

"But still there is the urge to punch him in the face." said Cas.

"Yes, there is." said Sam.

Castiel's cellphone made a faint sound. He took it from his coat pocket and looked at it for a moment. "Dean's gone." he said.

"Of course." said Sam, "What did he say?"

"Out. Back soon." said Cas.

"Great." said Sam, "Informative."

"Do you want me to find him?"

Sam thought about it. Cas could probably find him without letting Dean know he had been found. He could watch over him and this seemed like a good time for angelic protection, but Sam felt equal responsibility for Cas. He had two wounded brothers and letting both disappear at once seemed like a dereliction of duty. Besides, Dean might benefit from a few hours away from the pressures of the bunker.

"No. He told us he'd gone. Well, he told you. That probably means he's okay."

"Where do you suppose he's gone?"

"Maybe a bar." said Sam. He hoped a bar. Dean could handle a few drinks and a bar room brawl wasn't much of a challenge to him.

Castiel looked at the text message again. "I could ask him where he is."

"If he wanted us to know, he'd have said. He's probably fine. He just has to stay out of trouble."

"Dean?" said Cas.

Sam smiled. "I know, but he can deal with most kinds of trouble. As long as nobody checks his fingerprints, we'll be fine."

Castiel seemed deep in thought for a while, then he said, "Could I borrow your laptop?"

"Yeah, sure." said Sam, "Anytime." He got it and put it on the table. "Anything I can help with?"

"No, I think I know what I'm doing." said Cas, "I just need to prove something to Dean."

"Cas, you really don't." said Sam.

"I feel like I do." said Cas.

"Okay. Well, I'm taking this cold bacon and this coffee to my room. Shout if you need me. And if you hear anything from Dean, let me know."

"Of course." said Cas.

"Sometimes, all he needs is a few hours on the road." said Sam. He started to leave.

"Sam?" said Cas.

"Yes?"

"Are you okay?"

Sam smiled again. He was tired and he was troubled and he needed Dean and Cas to sort out their situation and be friends again, but apart from that, he was feeling surprisingly positive. Dean was at least keeping in touch and Castiel had not flown the coop. "I am if he is." he said.

Cas nodded and looked at the laptop's screen.


	5. Chapter 5

_Chapter 5._

After his solitary breakfast, Sam lay back on his bed and gazed up at the ceiling. He couldn't say that Cas was entirely wrong. He did tend to avoid dealing with his own issues by turning the focus onto someone else's, usually Dean's. The very argument Dean had used, that his problems were not fixable, was the same one Sam used to justify ignoring his own. You could hardly fix the fact of having been to Hell.

He was fine. He functioned well. Dean was right that he was a strong, capable, well-adjusted lunatic, but he was still a lunatic. Satan no longer kept him company, but sometimes his dreams were of fire and pain and the name Lucifer made him cower inside, a frightened child, hearing the steps of an abuser he could not hope to fight off.

He was fine. Most of the time, he was fine. Memories of Hell were not like other memories. They never blurred or slipped into the cracks of his mind, forgotten until some old sound or smell called them back from the crevices. They were sharp and clear and painful and they made him feel weak and powerless and alone.

He was fine. He had to be fine. Dean needed him to be fine and as that was the only thing Dean needed that he had the power to give, being fine became the most important thing in his life. He tried not to flinch at the name of Lucifer. He got up early and went to bed late, using research as an excuse, making sure that he stayed tired enough that he would sleep, even on nights when his own pounding heart warned him of nightmares to come.

He was Sam Winchester and he was damned if Lucifer was going to win. Of course, he was a little damned anyway. Winchesters seemed to be born with one foot in Hell. Dean seemed to live there. Dean had lived there, literally and the torture he had suffered and the torture he had inflicted had destroyed him. Sam could have gone to him and talked about anything else, but not Hell. That, he must remember alone.

Dean could face anything else, but any mention of Hell brought that look into his eyes, a look of infinite pain and shame and remorse. The only thing worse than Dean's own time in Hell was the knowledge that Sam had been there longer. At times, his eyes begged Sam to tell him it had not been as bad as he was imagining, but a century in Lucifer's cage with Lucifer and Michael exceeded anything Dean could imagine.

Dean could not speak to him of his own time there either. No other two brothers had such temporary damnation in common, but each, knowing that the details of his pain would be too much for his brother to bear, chose to say nothing. Self-sacrifice was the Winchester way.

Sam wished he could get Dean to talk about his own time in Hell. Nothing shut down a conversation quicker than mentioning it or alluding to it. Sam felt sure that what had happened to Dean in Hell was the root of most of his suffering now. The little Dean had told him haunted him and he knew that all of it, said and unsaid, haunted Dean. It was why he thought he was not worth saving. Sam knew that Dean had expected him to despise him after the revelation that he had tortured souls in Hell and that he had taken pleasure in it, but all he had felt was sorrow that his loving, compassionate brother had been so broken by his torment there and guilt, that Dean had only been there for his sake.

Dean thought himself a monster. Would a monster have agonised daily about what he had done? All Sam saw when he looked at Dean was his brother; the same brother who had whispered comfort to him in the dark when they were kids. There was pain and anger and shame and grief, but there was not one tiny shard of evil.

He wanted to talk about it with Dean. He wanted to argue against the inner voice that was always telling Dean he was worthless. He longed to remind his brother that he had undergone all that horror out of love for him and that he knew that and was grateful and sorry and heartbroken. He couldn't, though. Dean protected his lacerated soul with steel defences and any move towards discussion of his Hell would be met with, "So how was it in the cage?" And the pain that he had words for, he could never speak to a brother who loved him, who would feel it more keenly than his own.


	6. Chapter 6

_Chapter 6._

Dean knew the roads of Kansas well and he drove without thinking, not really knowing where he was going. Small towns came and went and he kept driving, wondering whether the text he had sent Cas would satisfy them or whether they were already trying to work out a way to find him. He thought about texting again, or calling them, but they might read too much into that and Sam had a disturbing habit of reading all the stuff he left out. There were advantages to knowing each other so well and he had often been glad that he could think like Sam any time he needed to, but it worked both ways and deceiving Sam was always difficult.

A truckstop provided him with a quick lunch and the waitress looked kindly on his half-hearted attempt to flirt and gave him her number. He put it carefully into his pocket, as if he intended to call her later. She smiled at him as he left and he wasn't sure who was flattering who, but he liked her anyway.

Back on the road, Metallica his soundtrack, he headed for Oklahoma. He still had no destination in mind, but just a feeling that he needed to be nowhere. He needed a place with few people and nothing to draw a hunter or anyone seeking one. He also needed to fight the temptation to head north, to South Dakota, because Jody Mills would ask him all the wrong questions.

He remembered Sam asking, "When did you last feel good?"

He was sure there must have been a time and it couldn't have been that long ago, but the details escaped him. Mostly, he felt tired and confused. Mostly, life seemed to be a downward lurch into a stinking mire and feeling good seemed like an expensive luxury.

He loved and hated the fact that Sam cared. That his brother loved him, after everything, was a constant source of wonder and delight, but that Sam felt Dean's sorrows as his own and needed to drag him out of the pit where he felt he belonged was depressing. Dean saw his own life as one of deserved failure. He had made bad decisions and done terrible things and it was fair that he should carry the burden he did. Sam had made mistakes, but always with good intentions and Dean felt that should count for something. Sam deserved to be happy, or at least not in constant misery. It seemed wrong that he should be weighed down with the burden his older brother had brought on himself.

He knew he was adding to that burden now. Sam would be worrying. He'd be wondering just how stupid Dean was going to be before he turned around and went home. Dean was wondering the same thing himself.

He had gone back to them exhausted, ashamed, drunk out of his skull and beaten half to death. Sam and Cas never cared how beat up he was or how dumb. They had taken him in with bloodlust pounding in his ears and with all the darkness of the Abyss in his eyes and they had fixed him, whatever it took and he was running from them now because he couldn't talk to them.

He pulled over to the side of the road and grabbed his phone. His thumb hovered over Sam's name. Sam would answer. Sam would listen to anything he had to say. A few words would make Sam stop worrying and would make him stop feeling quite so much of a rat.

He considered what he would say. He would sound calm and relaxed and tell Sam he'd be home later. Maybe he could talk to Cas and make things better there.

He almost did it. He wanted to, but it just felt too unsafe. He didn't trust himself not to sound crazy or lost. It felt horribly like all those times as a teenager, when he had hung back a little from going back to the motel, just until he could be sure of having the right amount of swagger, keeping his game face on for Sammy.


	7. Chapter 7

_Chapter 7._

When Sam went to find Cas, he was in the library, a pile of open books on the table in front of him.

"Are you finished with the laptop?" he said.

Cas looked up from his studies. "Yes. It was actually a lot simpler than I expected."

"What was?" said Sam.

"I did some editing. I hadn't thought about it before, but when you said about Dean's fingerprints, it occurred to me that law enforcement databases are a lot less complicated to edit than human minds." Neither of them mentioned Lisa and Ben, even when Dean was not around. Sam had never asked Cas how he had felt about erasing their memories of Dean. It felt like something that should not be asked. Cas went on, "So I removed all details of you and Dean and the Impala from all the databases. It's not perfect and there may still be some notes in a filing cabinet somewhere, but nothing electronic is going to flag you up."

"Cas, that's great!" said Sam.

"Well, it's something. I wanted to prove ..."

"You have nothing to prove, Cas." said Sam firmly. He looked at the pile of books. "So, what are you working on now?"

"Dean asked me to find ways to enhance the warding here. I'm just working on some more specific Enochian sigils."

"Well, that's a good sign." said Sam.

Cas looked at the book nearest Sam. "It was. Unfortunately, that only works on a kind of demon that was extinct by the seventeenth century." he said.

"No, I mean that Dean is looking at a future. A lot of the time, recently, he's been talking as if there isn't one."

Castiel looked uncomfortable.

"What?" said Sam.

"I don't want to break a confidence or trouble you unduly." he said.

"Come on, Cas, we're on the same team here."

Cas nodded. "Well, then, it's not that good a sign. The reason why he didn't involve you in the project is that his aim is to strengthen the defences so that you are safe when he is not here to protect you."

"Does he think that's imminent?" said Sam.

"I don't know, but he talks as if it is inevitable. His main priority is to ensure your safety."

"I wish he gave a damn about his own." said Sam.

"So do I."

"What does he imagine I'm going to do? Hide here, behind the warding?"

"I think he just wants to make sure you have a safe place to which you can run if you need to." said Cas.

"How bad do you think things are?" said Sam, "I mean, he's never valued his life much, but do you think ... "

"Suicide?" said Cas, "No. Not an option for him. He might welcome the risk of death, but he will not willingly leave you undefended or give you reason to think him a coward."

"Does he even think I could think that after all we've been through?" said Sam.

"After all that you've been through, you should know that your brother is capable of thinking anything."

Sam looked at the pile of books and at the notebook beside them, Dean's handwriting, planning out ways to protect him. "I've outlived him before." he said, "I never want to do it again."

Cas was silent, looking into his eyes for too long, making him feel like his soul was on display like inadequate laundry. One of the disadvantages of an angel as a best friend was that they were unsettling company at the best of times.

Cas gestured to the books. "All this is very sensible. Too many things have come here that should not have been able to. Better defences are not a bad idea."

"I agree." said Sam.

"But I'm doing this so he is aware that it's being done. If he is so convinced he is going to die, the least I can do is make sure he has no reason to feel guilty about it."

"Make him feel guilty!" said Sam, "Guilt is the one thing we have to stop him doing anything stupid!"

"You misunderstand me, Sam." said Cas and his eyes shone with determination, "I have no intention of allowing him to die, now or ever."

"We're human." said Sam, "Eventually, we will die."

"I don't accept that." said Castiel.

"Cosmic rules and all that." said Sam.

"I don't accept them either." said Cas.

"All I want is for him to outlive me, for him to have a life that doesn't just involve sacrificing all he has to save me."

"Let me clarify the situation." said Cas, "I have lost you both, more than once. You are the only real friends I have ever had and the only ones, on Earth or in Heaven who care about me at all. I have lost so much and will lose a lot more, that's how life works, but I am not prepared to lose either of you again and I will prevent that by any means necessary."

Sam stared at his friend. There had always been power in his voice, but now it had an intensity that almost made Sam believe him. "Do you think you can?" he said.

"Failure is not an option." said Cas.

"You think you can make Dean immortal?"

"Did you not hear me mention you as well?"

"How would you even begin?" said Sam.

"I began when I decided neither of you is going to die." said Cas.

"That can't be enough." said Sam.

"You're underestimating just how stubborn I can be." said Cas.

Sam grinned. "Whether you can do it or not, I love you, Cas."

"Have faith." said Cas.

"I do. In you, I do." said Sam.

"Of course, it would be easier to protect him if we knew where he was." said Cas.

"That would help." Sam agreed, "By the way, do you know about Destiel?"

"Is that an angel?" said Cas.

"No." said Sam, "It's more a sort of ... " He saw a glimmer in the angel's eye, "You know exactly what it is, don't you?"

Cas nodded. "When one follows the links to the Winchester Gospels, other things tend to come up." He leaned forward and said quietly, "I think we should keep it between us that I know. Dean would find that an uncomfortable thought."

"Yes, I think you may be right." said Sam, "But it doesn't bother you, I hope?"

"Baffles, rather than bothers." said Cas, "I really don't think I'm his type."

"No, you're really not." said Sam.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8.

The hours wore on without any word from Dean and Sam was beginning to think they should have gone after him. He checked his phone far too often and pretended to read books whose contents barely entered his consciousness. He told himself that Dean was fine as often and as insincerely as Dean generally assured him of it himself.

"I should try to find him." said Cas.

"Where would you start looking?" said Sam.

"Anywhere, Maybe he went to see a friend."

"Not Jody or Donna. They would have called, or made him call."

"We could call him."

"We could, but he probably won't answer."

"Maybe not me, but he would answer you."

Sam shook his head. "I doubt it." He composed the least demanding text he could think of and sent it. "Still in Kansas?"

The reply came about a minute later, "Not anymore, Toto."

"OK?" Sam sent.

"OK." came the response.

Sam put the phone down.

"What does he say?" said Cas, coming over,

"He says he's okay and not in Kansas." said Sam.

The phone rang. Sam answered it. "Dean!"

"Is everything okay, Sammy?" said Dean.

"I'm putting you on speaker." said Sam, doing just that.

"Cas is still there?"

"Cas can leave if you want him to." said Cas.

"No! Sit! Stay! Go nowhere!" said Dean.

Sam hesitated. He wanted to tell Dean how worried they had been and how foolish he had been to run out like that, but provoking further flight seemed like a bad idea. "Come home, Dean." he said.

Dean gave a little laugh. "Not really convenient right now, Sam. I met someone in Oklahoma. Her name's Monique. She has long, brown hair, eyes like melting chocolate and some very intriguing tattoos. We're going back to her place. I'm just waiting for her now."

Cas was shaking his head. Sam nodded his agreement. He didn't know why, but Dean was lying. "Sounds good." he said.

"I know I shouldn't have gone off like that." said Dean, "My head was just in a weird place this morning. And Cas, look, I never intended you to take anything I said seriously. Sam knows to ignore half of what I say and that means I don't have to be careful what I say to him, right, Sam?"

"Right." said Sam, it wasn't Dean's fault if, even knowing that, he still felt every unmeant word as a punch to the gut.

"So I talk to you like I talk to Sam and I forget that you don't get the nuances."

"I understand." said Cas in a tone that suggested he didn't.

"What we need is to sit down together and discuss this like grown-ups." said Sam.

There was a long silence and he wondered if that had sounded too much like nagging or criticism. He expected the call to end abruptly.

"Yeah." said Dean, "We should do that." Silence again, weird and awkward and laced with a dozen flavours of farewell.

"Dean?" said Sam, "Are you okay?"

No answer. Sam looked at Cas, then said, "Dean, where are you?"

"Right here." said Dean, "Sorry, just saw Monique heading this way. I better go. Never keep a lady waiting."

"At least give me a town." said Sam.

"Elk City." said Dean, "But trust me, I'll be home tomorrow. You don't need to come looking."

"Okay, great. Be careful, okay?"

"I always am." said Dean.

"Bye, Jerk."

"Bye, Bitch, bye, Cas."

"Bye," said Cas. As soon as the call ended, he looked at Sam, "There's no Monique."

"If there were, he wouldn't have wasted time talking to us." said Sam.

"Do we believe Elk City?" said Cas.

"If you had your wings, we could find him easily."

"If he sleeps, I can find him in his dreams." said Cas.

"How will you know he's asleep?" said Sam.

"It's complicated. Easy enough when you know the Astral Plane well."

"So watch for him sleeping, then check on how he is."

"I will. Of course, that means leaving you unattended."

"Yeah, I'm not the one with the problem." said Sam.

Cas raised an eyebrow. "How much research do you plan to do tonight?"

"Not much. Not much needed right now."

"So you'll get some sleep?"

"I always get plenty of sleep." Sam lied.

"You forget, I'm awake all night. I hear you moving around. I see you reading, long after Dean is in his room, also pretending to sleep."

"Doesn't it bother you that your whole life seems to be watching over us?" said Sam.

Cas regarded him levelly for a moment and then said, "What else should I be doing? Do you know anyone who needs a guardian angel more?"

Sam smiled. Irritating though it could be to have Castiel around in mother hen mode, he felt better knowing that Dean would not be as alone as he doubtless felt. "Make sure he's okay." he said.

"I will. Make sure you get some rest." said Cas.


	9. Chapter 9

_Chapter 9._

Dean made himself comfortable. Outside, a wind was blowing through the trees, but the night was not cold. He'd been sleeping in the Impala from time to time for as long as he could remember and she might not have the luxuries of even the most basic motel room, but she felt familiar and defensible and homey.

He remembered huddling in the back seat with Sam when they were small, listening to their Dad snoring in the front. Now he lay across the front seats, the very discomfort bringing a kind of reassurance. Whatever changed, that part of the seat would always make his shoulder ache in that specific way.

He had sought out solitude, but he didn't actually feel that alone. Maybe it was the memories keeping him company, the feeling that the car would always be his link to Sam and to their father, one place where he could feel close to them both in a way he couldn't anywhere else.

Everything at home remained unresolved. Sam was worried about him, but there was anger too. For some reason, Sam was very protective of Castiel and resented Dean's lack of care when he said the kind of dumb things he had said that morning. Dean wasn't sure how he felt about that. It was good that someone cared how Castiel was feeling, but he was profoundly aware that it should have been him and although he loved Sam for trying to clear up his mess, he also felt annoyed at the reminder that he had failed to clear it up himself, or avoid making it.

Cas had sounded unhappy on the phone. Dean thought about praying, talking to him alone, convincing him that they were still friends. He was tired, though and aware that he would probably end up yelling at Cas and making everything worse.

The knowledge that Cas was literally only a prayer away made him feel as if the angel were with him in the car. He even looked into the back seat, so strong was the feeling, but there was no-one there. He settled back down and closed his eyes.

Sleep didn't come. On the contrary, he felt more awake than he had with his eyes open. He opened them again and sat up. He decided a walk might help, so he grabbed his knife and gun and left the car. He went off into the trees, feeling the wind on his face and soon the first few drops of rain.

The stars were bright. He remembered Bobby showing him and Sam how to identify them and the constellations they had invented for themselves, one night when they were bored and feeling silly. "That's the Rabbit." Sam had said and Dean had pointed out the curves of the Cheerleader. Tonight, he could make out the Scythe and the Cage and the Coffin and he acknowledged to himself that he was not in a good state of mind.

He sank onto an old tree trunk that made a kind of natural bench and put his head into his hands. Again, he had that feeling of not being alone. Usually, that feeling made him cautious, but now it felt good. It felt like a time he barely remembered, when his mother had said, "Angels are watching over you." and he had believed it.

"I'm okay." he said, knowing that he wasn't. He reached into his pocket for the flask of whisky he kept there. Too late, he remembered he had not filled it up.

"I'm okay." he said.

He took his phone from his pocket. Sam and Cas thought he was with Monique and would be instantly suspicious of even a text. He picked another name.

"Dean?" said Jody.

"Hi. I was just thinking, you and the girls should come to the bunker soon. All that lore, could be very useful."

"Good idea." said Jody, "I'll talk to the girls, sometime when they're awake."

"Yeah, sorry. It's a bit late, I guess."

"You wanna come here and help me empty a bottle or two?" she said.

Dean smiled to himself. Jody's door was always open to anyone who needed a bolt hole. "Thanks for the offer, but I can't tonight. I'm on a case in Oklahoma."

"Anything you could use help with?" she said.

"Nah, just a basic ghost hunt." he said, "Sorry I bothered you so late. I'm bored out of my skull, here."

She laughed. "No closing time here, Dean. You know that."

"Sheriff, you are pure gold." he said.

"Is Sam there?" she said.

"Sam's sleeping." he said, hoping it might be true.

"Say hi from me, when he wakes up." she said.

"Will do. Speak to you soon." he said, ending the call.

The rain was getting heavier. He wiped his phone with the edge of his shirt and then stood up. "I'm fine." he said, aware that he had just called a friend in the middle of the night because being alone with his thoughts was unbearable.

He walked back to the car, locked the door and once again got into the least uncomfortable position. He was preparing himself for a wakeful night, slightly damp, with the wind and rain a constant background noise. He closed his eyes, to at least make an attempt at sleep. All the years of a nomadic, no-frills life had made him able to sleep almost anywhere and soon he did.


	10. Chapter 10

_Chapter 10._

Sam was just pouring his third coffee of the night when Cas came into the kitchen. "Sorry to disturb your sleep." said Cas, looking disapprovingly at the mug.

"It's too late at night for sarcasm." said Sam.

"It's too late for coffee. Weren't you going to get some sleep?"

"Yeah, I was, but fortunately, I'm still awake, so you don't need to wake me." said Sam. He and Cas bristled at each other for a second and then Sam smiled. "Sorry. Tired. How's Dean?"

"Sleeping," said Cas.

"Did you get into his dreams?"

"Yes. They were not good. He's deeply troubled and not just about our fight. Is there anything in the world he doesn't feel responsible for?"

"Nothing in our lifetime." said Sam, "Did you talk to him?"

"No. I don't think he even knew I was there. I just tried to calm the chaos a little. I whispered to his subsconscious, telling him not to stay away too long, assuring him that all would be well. He'll be fine until morning, but I'll check in on his dreams a few times during the night. I just need to make sure all is well here before I focus on him again."

"Well, as you can see ... "

"By which I mean, that you are also asleep."

"Hey, in twenty minutes, I'll be going to bed and I promise to sleep like a baby."

"I've seen babies sleep. They sleep intermittently at best."

Sam sighed. "Cas, sometimes, talking to you is exhausting."

"I estimate you've had about three hours' sleep in the past twenty-four. Are you sure it's talking to me that is exhausting?" said Cas. He picked up the mug of coffee and poured it down the sink. "Tomorrow, if Dean does come back, we can expect a difficult day. I know you can run on very little sleep, but you know that I need to focus my attention on Dean and that will be harder to do if you are collapsing in the corner."

"So you want me to go to bed right away." said Sam.

"I want you to let me send you into unconsciousness." said Cas.

"Oh, no. No." said Sam, backing away.

"You don't trust me?"

"With my life." said Sam, "But I need to be in control. As you say, tomorrow, we both need our brains working."

"Sleep is good for brains." said Cas, as if talking to a confused and difficult child.

"Long before Dean gets here we need to be strategising." said Sam.

"It's hours away." said Cas.

"What if I oversleep?"

"I decide how long you sleep. Eight hours would be good."

Sam calculated. "Yeah, okay, but if Dean calls ... "

"If you need to wake up, I can wake you." said Cas.

Sam wasn't even sure why it bothered him so much. He trusted Cas, but it unnerved him when Cas could reach out and switch off his consciousness so effortlessly. It didn't help that angels had used that power to stop them from intervening in the past. It wasn't even a matter of surrender or trust, because he could do it with or without their consent. Maybe that was the root of Sam's discomfort. Of all the tortures in the cage, the worst had been the helplessness, the feeling that he had no choice, no will. He wanted sleep, though. He needed sleep. All three of them needed to be as strong as they could be, because things needed to be resolved.

"Okay. Give me five minutes to get ready, then come and do your Sandman bit, but we need to be ready to discuss plans, so don't let me sleep too long."

"I promise, I will wake you in plenty of time."

A few minutes later, Sam lay on his bed, feeling weird about the whole thing. He tried to hide his unease when Cas came in, but his whole body tensed up and he knew he did not seem relaxed.

"It's fine." said Cas.

"I know." said Sam.

Cas lifted two fingers in a blessing gesture and touched his forehead. Sam knew nothing else until the morning.


	11. Chapter 11

_Chapter 11._

Dean was surprised to find it was fully light outside. Usually, he did not sleep for long. He actually felt pretty good and he went about the standard morning routine with a rare lightness of heart.

The day ahead would be difficult and the hardest part would be just going back to Sam and Cas and facing their inevitable complaints, all of them justified. He felt better having spoken to them. They'd sounded worried, rather than angry. He didn't think he'd be subjected to the full, hour-long lecture from Sam. Maybe they'd just let him settle back down into a life of comfortable denial.

Maybe, though, they needed and deserved more than that from him. There were things he couldn't fix, but there must be things he could. Maybe he would always have issues with anger and a need to provoke physical attack, but maybe he should stick to annoying the monsters he was going to kill anyway, not saying hurtful things to Cas. Maybe he needed to take their criticisms on board and make an effort to be easier to live with, because neither the celestial being nor the man who had voluntarily faced Hell and come out of it stronger than ever needed Dean Winchester half as much as he needed both of them.

That was the bottom line. If he vanished out of their lives, they would miss him and they would be sad. If they vanished out of his, he would be bereft. The first time Sam had died, he had experienced the truth of that. As the last breath had left his brother's body, the last tiny spark of hope had left his. There was no point to his life but to protect and love Sam. There was no family left but Sam and Cas. There was no reason to hold onto anything but his two brothers.

Cas was an angel. He had lived for millions, billions of years before Dean had been around and would go on without him easily enough. Dean wasn't even sure angels could feel the same affection for others that humans did. Cas seemed to and tried to, but what he really felt, behind those hard to read eyes was anybody's guess.

Sam was stronger than anyone else. When the wall in his head had broken and memories of Hell had taken over ... when his every moment was haunted by a memory of Lucifer that was so real to him he could not tell what was truth and what was hallucinatory ... Sam had still been able to hunt, to fight, to save others. At times, his broken, far from sane brother had been his stability and strength. Sam probably needed no-one. He definitely didn't need Dean like Dean needed him to need him.

People had used the word co-dependency of the relationship he had with his brother and they said it like it was a bad thing. To Dean, depending on each other was what family was for. So many times, the universe seemingly against him and his own strength gone, he had turned to find Sam right beside him, ready to face certain death or worse and he had done the same for Sam and that was co-dependency as he saw it and he didn't think it was anything to worry about - just brothers being brothers.

He needed Sam and he refused to be ashamed of that. He needed so little else. He had learnt to live without hope, happiness, peace, pride, courage, dignity and a plan. If the whole world laughed at him, derided him or ignored him, he didn't care, as long as Sam and Cas still thought he was worth something. They were his one weakness, but a weakness that relied on so much strength might not be much of a weakness at all, as long as he could stop them from giving up on him.

He wished he could stop turning it over in his mind. He was aware that he was putting himself through all conceivable arguments unnecessarily. He should wait and see what they said. He knew, though, that the whole trip home would be full of thoughts he didn't need to have. There might be a downside to co-dependency after all.


	12. Chapter 12

_Chapter 12._

Sam was woken by the sound of his own name. He opened his eyes and saw Castiel standing beside his bed. "Dean is on his way here." said Cas.

"What time is it?" said Sam.

"8:38." said Cas.

"What? That's practically lunchtime!"

"Dean won't be here for hours and you needed the rest. You feel better, don't you?"

Sam thought about it. "Yeah, actually, I do."

"And no bad dreams?"

"None that I remember," said Sam.

Cas smiled. "See? I can be useful."

Sam got out of bed. "You know you don't need to be useful, right?"

"There you go again, worrying about the feelings of an angel." said Cas, "Now, you will want to shower and eat and I'll be in the library when you're ready to conspire."

"Strategise." said Sam.

"What's the difference?" said Cas.

"Conspire sounds sinister." said Sam.

"Oh. Right. Strategise, then."

Sam joined Cas in the library as soon as he could. They sat at right angles to each other at the corner of one of the tables. Sam said, "Any strategies leap to mind?"

"Dean is a flight risk," said Cas, "As he proved yesterday. Also a fight risk, actually. You might want to stay out of range of his fists."

"When Dean is angry or scared, you'll find nowhere is out of range." said Sam.

"Then make sure I am closer." said Castiel, "He can hit me as hard as he likes and I won't feel a thing."

"I'm hoping we can keep things nice and civilised." said Sam.

"Me too, but experience tells me that all the good intentions in the world might not prevent a flare-up. Dean is volatile and you can be too."

There was no point in denying it. "We bring out the worst in each other, I know. For years, I didn't know why, but now I think it's because when we were kids, the only thing I was really afraid of was that Dean would get sick of being stuck with his weak, geek little brother and would ditch me. Whenever we argue, there's a part of me that says, 'Oh Hell, this is it, he knows I'm not worth the effort.' So I get irrational and, improbable though it seems, I think it's the same for him. He hears disagreement and he thinks I'm about to say that I don't need him anymore. I have said that, at times, but it isn't true and I think the key to stopping both of us going nuclear is for me to make it very clear to him that I do need him and always will."

Cas gave a faint smile. "I think you've been more honest in the past minute than you have in the past five years."

"Oh, I've been honest a lot more than that, but it usually ends with a fight." said Sam, "But today, I need to be calm and rational and we probably need to discuss things on his terms. Like you said, he's the one likely to run out on us."

"If you want to get in practice for difficult conversations, let's discuss the stuff you won't discuss with Dean. I'm guessing Hell is top of the list."

"Neither of us wants to talk about Hell." said Sam.

"It's not an easy subject, I know, but it's always there, between you. You blame yourself for his Hell, he blames himself for yours. You each know the other blames himself, so you feel bad any time you so much as allude to what you went through. You could take away a lot of Dean's pain by just telling him how it was in the cage."

"No, Cas, I really couldn't."

"He's got ideas in his head of how it was ... "

"Has he told you what they are?"

"No. He can't talk about it."

"No. Whatever they are, Cas, I don't think they come close. You saw my Hell. Do you think Dean could even guess at it?"

"Put like that, no, I suppose he couldn't."

"So let him go on imagining, because the imagination is so much less than the reality."

"Except that Dean is clever enough to know that, if you could ease his fears about what you went through, you would. So he knows it must be worse than he thinks."

"Yes, I know. I suppose editing the bad stuff out of his memories would be unethical and unwise, but is it impossible?"

Cas frowned. "It's crossed my mind, but take away all the darkness and what's left of Dean?"

Sam remembered when a witch had erased Dean's memory. First the bad stuff, then everything else had slipped away. "Yeah, you're right. Look, I don't want to tell Dean anything about Hell, because his burden is heavy enough, but if I need to tell him every detail, I will. I'll do whatever it takes, including reliving that, second by second, because the only thing that matters is Dean."

"You matter too, to him and to me. I'm not bringing this up to force you into further sacrifice. If there are really things you cannot do, knowing them now will enable us to find other ways."

"There's nothing I can't do for Dean." said Sam, "There's nothing I won't do. I know you're always worrying about me, both of you, but there's no need."

"Just as you always worry about us. On the subject of which, why are you so worried about me now?"

"Before you met us, how many friends did you have? Real friends, I mean."

"My comrades in the Garrison, brother and sister angels, but real friends? The truth is, I had no idea what those were before I met you and Dean." said Cas.

"That's what I thought. You never had anyone you could get drunk with or yell at, knowing it wouldn't change a thing, or unload to when you screwed up or celebrate with when you did something great. You asked if I doubt the sincerity of your friendship. I don't. I can't. I've seen it shown in blood and pain and death and I know that if Lucifer appeared in front of us now, you'd stand between me and him even if you knew you couldn't hope to survive."

"Of course." said Cas.

"Your friendship is sincere and it's strong and it's as strong as ours for you. But you didn't grow up with this kind of love. You didn't have lesser friendships that failed or burned out or just faded. You didn't have schoolyard break-ups with your best friend of the week or get rejected by your crush or go through any of the things that build resilience and make us hate the sight of a Jack-o-lantern."

"That what?" said Cas.

"Not important right now." said Sam. He raised a finger, "Or ever, actually. My point is that you are old and wise and powerful, but you're a rookie when it comes to human emotion. Things that bounce off old-hands like me hit you right in the heart and both Dean and I forget that far too often. I don't think we even know what has the capacity to hurt you. Maybe not knowing is understandable, but not caring isn't."

"It's not your fault or Dean's if you don't understand the complications of an angel's emotions." said Cas.

"No, maybe not, but how you feel is important. If we don't get it, try telling us. Because we do care, Cas, even when we seem wrapped up in our own stuff, we care about yours."

Sam's phone rang. He took it from his pocket and looked at the screen. "Hi, Jody!" he said.

"I'm just calling to ask how your ghost hunt went." she said.

"What ghost hunt?" he asked.

"Yeah, call me psychic, but that's what I thought you'd say."


	13. Chapter 13

_Chapter 13._

Dean stopped for gas and some food at a place that looked as if it were being haunted by 1974. Not that he had a problem with that. He tried not to eat too slowly. He hated the thought that his instinct was to delay his return as much as possible. Stricken with feelings of cowardice and guilt, he returned to the car and called Sam.

"Dean?" said his brother. His tone was anxious. He was waiting for Dean to make some excuse and avoid going home. Dean realised he was trying to think of one. He immediately rejected the thought.

"I'll be maybe an hour." he said, "You want me to bring anything?"

"No." said Sam. Dean could hear him not asking.

"I'm fine. I feel a little stupid, but I'm used to that." he said.

"You're not stupid." said Sam. It was automatic, always had been. He'd call him every name in his wide vocabulary when they argued, but he would never tolerate anyone else criticising Dean, even, maybe especially, Dean.

"Don't pretend you're okay with how I treated Cas." said Dean.

"I'm not, but neither are you. That's why you needed to get away." said Sam.

"I'm okay with it." said Cas.

"You weren't okay with it yesterday." said Dean.

"Where are you?" said Cas.

"Not far away."

"Do you want us to drive out and meet you halfway?" said Cas.

"Thanks, but I'll soon be home anyway." said Dean. He hoped that didn't sound unkind. He just felt he needed a little more thinking time. "I'm just going over things in my head." he said.

"That's what I was afraid of." said Cas.

"It's not as bad as it sounds. I think I'm actually thinking pretty clearly. Slept better last night than I have in months, isn't that weird? I'll be home soon and then, family meeting, right away, I promise."

"Okay," said Cas, "How long do you two need me to disappear for?"

Dean almost laughed. Cas still didn't see that he was family. Anxious to avoid a chick flick moment, he said firmly, "Listen, dumbass, when I declare a family meeting, you and Sam attend, because I'm the oldest."

There was a moment of silence then, with a smile audible in his voice, Cas asked, "How, exactly are you the oldest?"

Fair question, he was older by a lot of zeroes. Dean was not going to let the ancient angel pull rank. "I've been a Winchester longest. You got that, cloud jockey?"

"I confess, I never feel more like your brother than when you are talking nonsense and calling me names." said Cas.

"Yeah, well, that's what brothers do." said Dean, "Now, I have to get back on the road. I'll see you both soon." He would be there sooner than the promised hour, which would make him seen eager, not reluctant. He wondered whether that would fool either of them for a second.


	14. Chapter 14

_Chapter 14._

Sam and Cas heard the bunker door open and went to meet Dean as he came down the stairs. He was carrying bags. At the foot of the stairs, he handed one to Sam. "I got beer and snacks." he said.

"Great." said Sam, trying to judge his brother's exact mood and failing to make a clear assessment.

Dean gave the other two bags to Cas and started to walk away. "Okay, I stink of gas and coffee. Give me five minutes to shower and then you can unleash Hell." He turned back, raised a finger and said, "Metaphorically."

"That's not the plan." said Sam, "We all need to work out how to make things better around here. This isn't a trial or a disciplinary thing. We want to help."

Dean smiled slightly. "Yeah, I want that too. I want things to be easier for all of us. Be right back."

They watched him go. Cas said quietly, "What do you think?"

"I honestly don't know." said Sam.

Dean came back. "Oh, Sam, I'd hand over the keys, but you know I can hotwire that car faster than you could start her with the key. All I can give is my word not to run off again."

"Your word is enough." said Sam. He had often staked his life on it.

Dean nodded. "Good." He went to take his shower.

Cas and Sam went into the library and sat at a table. They didn't say much. They were both aware that Dean might arrive at any moment and did not want him to overhear any further strategising.

All the books on warding had been put away. The room was tidy and comfortable. Sam knew where Dean would sit. He would choose the long side of the table, opposite Sam. Cas was sitting at the end. They had both chosen not to seem like they were trying to keep him from running out of the room. Dean needed to feel he could leave, even if he had promised not to.

He didn't leave them waiting long. Fairly soon, he came in, hair still slightly damp, fresh clothes making him look a lot less rumpled. "Hi." he said, sitting down opposite Sam, "Before we start, I'm guessing there are things that are off the table."

"Anything you want to put off the table?" said Sam.

Dean frowned. "I'm not exactly sure what you two want to discuss and I don't want to get in your way, but I assume we need to keep the L word out of it."

"Lipstick?" said Cas.

"Lucifer." said Dean, "Every time he's mentioned, Sam flinches. I tell you what. Let's just leave anything Hell-related out of the discussion. It's all in the past. It can't hurt us and bringing it up never makes anyone happier." He looked at Sam, "Right, Sam?"

Sam couldn't tell whether Dean seemed more anxious to protect Sam or himself, but he probably believed he was doing both. Sam was tempted to agree, removing the most painful topic from the conversation, but he decided that would be a mistake.

"You said family meeting." he said, "This family honours the First Amendment."

Quoting his father was a calculated risk. It might enrage Dean as easily as it could persuade him.

Dean smiled. "Yeah, Dad really regretted saying that on that particular night." he said.

"I just think we shouldn't limit the stuff we can talk about, since we so rarely talk about anything. We need to go carefully, I know. Cas is scared of rejection, you're terrified of intimacy ... "

"Hey, I have no problem with intimacy!" said Dean, "Ask any of the women I ..."

"I don't mean sex." said Sam, "I mean the kind of intimacy where you talk honestly about your feelings."

"Oh. No. Hate that."

"Yeah, exactly." said Sam, "And I'm just scared I'll say the wrong thing and one or both of you will hate me for it. So we all need to remember, honesty is good, openness is good, but it's all very disturbing to three repressed, antisocial hunters and there may be moments when one of us needs to halt the conversation for a while."

"You think I'm repressed?" said Dean.

"When I look up repressed in the dictionary, there's a picture of you." said Sam.

"I prefer restrained." said Dean, "Maybe self-contained."

"You bury everything." said Sam.

"Except the stuff I dig up to salt and burn." said Dean.

"What?" said Sam.

"What?" said Dean, a moment later.

"We're all like that." said Sam.

"Yeah, exactly. So it's normal."

"Normal for us." said Sam.

"What's wrong with us?" said Dean.

"Isn't that what we need to discuss?" said Castiel, impatiently.

"Yeah, well, at least I don't have pictures in my dictionary." said Dean.

"You have a dictionary?" said Sam. He caught Castiel's look and realised he was already allowing himself to fall into old patterns. He grinned. "We are so good at avoiding the issue."

"Masters of it." said Dean, "So, anyone want to take a shot at defining the issue?"

Sam was finding that difficult, so he was relieved when Castiel said, "As I see it, we are battle-weary veterans of an unending war between good and evil and sometimes good and other good and sometimes three flavours of not good, but better than the worst and we have deep wounds and heavy burdens and not a chance in sight for an end to the battle. But we are all good soldiers and we know our duty, so we push down all the things that would make us ineffective fighters and we tell ourselves we will deal with it later, even though we are fairly sure there will never be a time when we are not too busy fighting." He let that sink in for a moment or two and then added, "And by we, I mainly mean you two."

"And by us two, he mainly means you, Dean." said Sam.

"No, definitely both of you." said Cas.

"You've been fighting longer and alone." said Sam to Cas,

"I'm a celestial being. You two are human. Exceptional humans, but still human. You have the normal, human need to talk about the things that trouble you, to share your burdens, but of course, your burdens are far weightier than those that humans were supposed to bear."

"Not true." said Dean, "We were supposed to bear them. Our whole lives only happened because we were supposed to bear them. Fate, destiny, all that crap."

"Maybe." said Cas, "Maybe even you were not supposed to go through all that you have gone through."

"You're saying we can't take it?" said Dean.

"I'm saying you have taken it and will continue to take it, but each of you acts like you have to do it alone. That isn't true. And the bunker mentality isn't helping either."

Dean spoke slowly, condescendingly, "We are in an actual bunker."

"I know. You probably shouldn't be, all the time. This place reinforces your belief that you are in this fight alone and constantly in danger."

"We are constantly in danger. Shall I list the life-threatening injuries of the past year alone?" said Dean.

"But you are not alone. You have each other. You have me."

"Yeah, we do and we are grateful." said Dean.

"My point is that either of you can talk to me at any time. And I know maybe you feel that Heaven could be listening in ... "

"It's not that." said Dean, "Well, not just that. Not mostly that. I just wouldn't wish the stuff in my head on my worst enemy and you are my best friend."

"So tell me about it." said Sam, "I already have worse stuff in my head."

Dean looked at him, his expression thoughtful. "What worse stuff?" he said.

"You know what worse stuff." said Sam.

"I really wish I did." said Dean, "Tell me."

"Lucifer, the cage, stuff like that." said Sam, acutely aware that Dean was trying to read his eyes.

"Why won't you tell me how it was?" said Dean, "You know about my Hell."

"I know what you'll tell me about your Hell, but you never tell me much." said Sam.

"Well, you never tell me a thing about yours." said Dean, "Just that it was worse than mine, which I already knew, because you were trapped with two psycho archangels and I was just with the rest of the rabble, plus, I went native and you never did."

"No," said Cas, "You never did that either." Sam heard the sorrow in his voice, the sympathy that Dean would only hear as pity.

"You know what I was. I was a monster. You dragged me out of that place." said Dean.

"What I dragged out of there was human." said Cas.

"Corrupted, twisted, evil." said Dean. Each word cut Sam to the heart. He could not bear to hear his brother talk about himself in that way.

"You were none of those things." said Sam, "You were tortured."

"I was a torturer." said Dean.

"You had no choice." said Sam.

"Really? Dad held out. You would have too."

"I don't think I would have held out thirty days, much less thiry years." said Sam.

"You said no to Lucifer, every damn time."

"Even when others were not so strong." said Castiel to Sam.

"That's different." said Sam.

"I need a beer." said Dean, "Anybody else need a beer?" Tears glittered in his eyes before he blinked them away and left the room.


	15. Chapter 15

_Chapter 15._

In the library, Sam and Cas looked at each other. "Do you think we need to back off from the stuff about Hell?" said Sam.

Cas shook his head. "I think it's important."

"I agree, but if Dean can't handle discussing it, we could lose him before we've really begun." said Sam.

"We left him there far too long." said Cas. It took Sam a moment to realise he meant the angels. They had failed to bring him out before he broke the first seal. At the time, Sam knew that Cas had believed that to be unintentional, but the senior angels had been playing games of their own and they had allowed the seal to be broken by a righteous man, shedding blood in Hell.

"Not your fault." said Sam.

"He thinks he was a monster, but that place was full of monsters. They needed a good man. I wish he could see that."

Dean came in with three bottles of beer and gave them one each. "Cas," he said, opening his own bottle, "Listen, I said a lot of stupid stuff to you yesterday. That stuff about you not being a real friend, about your lack of judgement and ... "

"I remember all of it." said Cas, "No need to repeat it."

"Okay, but the important thing is that I wind people up. I start fights. I know what to say to make people crazy ... people and sometimes angels. Not one word was true. I swear. I didn't mean any of it."

"Some of it was clearly true." said Cas, "I have lied to you, I have let you down, I have been a poor sort of friend."

"You're a better friend than I deserve." said Dean.

"You're hardly a good judge of what you deserve." said Cas, "Your self-image is not remotely accurate or fair."

Dean sighed. "Cas, I am nothing. I am less than nothing."

"Because you were tortured in Hell?" said Cas.

"No, the torture just revealed the truth. I can't have any illusions now." Dean started to turn away.

Cas grabbed his arm. "Dean, sit, please."

"You saw me in Hell. You saw what I was." said Dean, sinking into his chair.

"Yes," said Cas, "I saw."

"Blood on my hands, a smile on my face." said Dean.

Sam looked from one to the other. Their shared memory brought pain into the eyes of both. He could see that remembering was an agony each had to carry forever.

Cas let go of Dean's arm. "I saw Dean Winchester."

"Yes, stripped of all human pretence."

"Stripped of all hope, all sense of self. I saw you wounded. I saw you half-destroyed by despair."

"A monster." said Dean. He looked at Sam. "I'm sorry." he said.

"Sorry? You went to Hell for me and you're sorry?" said Sam.

"I'm sorry that what came back wasn't what I had been pretending to be. The torture didn't change me, it just revealed me."

"That isn't what torture does." said Castiel, "The whole point of what you suffered in Hell was to break you and change you and make you do things so alien to your nature that they were an affront to Heaven and an abomination. You think you took up the tools of torture to escape the torture, but it was just a deeper level of torment. All they had done to you up to that point had failed to destroy you. It was in making you become what was most intolerable for you that they finally broke you." Cas looked at Dean with infinite compassion and said quietly, "And they did break you, Dean. You didn't choose to do it. Your will to resist was stripped from you, along with everything else."

"Weak, instead of wicked?" said Dean.

"Broken, not evil." said Cas.

"What I did ... "

"It was done to you. Making you a torturer was a part of the torture. And, of course, they needed you, a righteous man, to shed blood in Hell."

"A righteous man!" said Dean bitterly, "I don't think I was ever that."

"When have you ever chosen the easy way instead of the right one? When have you sacrificed an innocent to preserve your own life? When did you ever, even for a moment, put your needs first? You are the most righteous man I know!" said Cas.

"I enjoyed inflicting pain." said Dean.

"No, you didn't." said Cas.

"I loved it." said Dean.

"No, you hated it. You still hate every moment of it."

"I hate what I did, but I enjoyed it."

"You enjoyed not being powerless after thirty years of being a helpless victim."

"Why, in God's name, would you defend me?" said Dean. He took a swig of beer and almost choked on it. Sam longed to know what to say. He felt helpless and stupid in the face of his brother's undeserved shame.

Cas stood and put his hand on Dean's shoulder. "I dragged you out of Hell, broken and tortured. I was afraid there was not enough of you left to stop Lucifer ... to stop anything. Your soul was screaming. I still hear that sound ringing in my ears. I put you back in your body and I prayed." He moved his hand away and glanced at Sam. Sam nodded encouragement. Dean was listening.

"Everyone keeps telling me I'm dead inside." said Dean.

"Well, everyone is wrong. If you were, I don't think it would hurt this much, would it? You were almost dead inside when I took you out of the pit, but the moment you were free, you started fighting again and you have never stopped and when I lose hope and faith and can't see any way through whatever mess we are in, I follow you, because I know, whatever happens, you will be on the right side, doing the best you can do."

"You're following the wrong person."

"I don't think so." said Cas, "I want to show you something."

"No." said Dean.

"It's good."

"No. I don't wanna see it." said Dean.

"Trust Cas." said Sam, "You know he wouldn't hurt you."

Dean looked at him. "Sam, stay out of this."

"Why are you afraid?" said Cas.

"What do you want to show me?" said Dean.

"What I think of you." said Cas, "I want you to see how I see you."

"Well, that's either gonna crush my ego or terrify me." said Dean.

"I hope not." said Cas.

Dean stood up. "Give me a minute, okay?"

"Okay." said Cas.

Dean left.

Sam put his head in his hands. "We lost him."

"Maybe he just needs air." said Cas.

"I'm sorry I couldn't help much. It's hard to know what to say when he's like that."

Cas sat on the table. "I know. I was winging it too."

"At least you have wings." said Sam.


	16. Chapter 16

_Chapter 16._

Dean paced outside the bunker. He didn't want to see what Cas really thought of him. He didn't want to know what anybody really thought of him, because it never seemed to be good news. An angel of the Lord who knew every mistake he had ever made and who had, the day before, attacked him so eagerly, was hardly likely to tell him anything good about himself.

Then there was the possibility that he might. Maybe Cas really did see him as good and maybe he was as deluded as Sam, angel or not. Then the whole provocation issue became a much deeper betrayal. Best not to know either way.

He wasn't happy about the abilities of angels. It felt weird to have someone around who could touch him and alter his thoughts. He trusted Cas, but he had always preferred to keep people, however much he loved and trusted them, out of his head. Show them the performance, not the backstage chaos.

When Sam had been in Palo Alto and Dean and his father had been working together, they had rarely, if ever, talked about feelings. After a few too many drinks, John might tell his son he loved him, but sober, he would discuss lore or tactics and Dean was fine with that. He smiled sadly to himself. Sam was right. He was afraid of intimacy. But then, the most open and intimate relationship of his life had ended when his mother had died horrifically. She was back now, thanks to Amara, but they were no longer close. Her long absences were, in some ways, harder to bear than her death. He knew that she was choosing to stay away.

He heard a noise and stopped pacing. The bunker door opened and Castiel came out. "I think I misjudged my approach." he said. He stayed close to the door. Dean understood and appreciated the gesture. Cas didn't want him to feel cornered.

"Sorry." said Dean.

"No need to apologise." said Cas, "I didn't want to make you feel uncomfortable."

"I know." said Dean.

"It does trouble me a little that you are so afraid of my thoughts. What do you imagine is going to leap out at you?"

"It's honestly not about you." said Dean, "It's just, that's not a mirror I want to look into."

"Or any mirror?" said Cas.

Dean nodded. "Any mirror, but especially that one. Cas, I'm the reason you fell!"

Cas seemed surprised. "You blame yourself for that?"

"Are you claiming not to blame me for that?" said Dean, "Even the other angels make it very clear they blame me."

"Who says a fall is always a bad thing?" said Cas, "You taught me to think for myself. You encouraged me to question. You showed me what free will means."

"I made your own kind hate you. I was directly responsible for your plunge into humanity."

"You taught me humanity." said Cas, "And when I lost everything, failed at everything, made every possible mistake and left a swathe of destruction across Heaven and Earth, you and Sam refused to give up on me."

"You stood with us when the rest of the universe stood against us." said Dean.

Cas took a few steps towards him. He reciprocated with a single step forwards. Cas said, "I wanted you to see what I think of you because it's all good. Nothing you see in my thoughts will be painful to you."

"Right now, everything is painful." said Dean, "Including the fact that you're my best friend and I treated you badly."

"Yeah, well, the thing with best friends is, you can do that and it all gets forgiven." said Cas.

"Well, the thing with me is I like to deal with the painful stuff alone." said Dean.

"It's working well. I can tell." said Cas.

Without really thinking about it, Dean found himself walking over to Cas. He wasn't sure why he did it. When they were a few feet apart, he gave a weak smile and said, "Maybe it's not a perfect strategy."

"Maybe not." said Cas, "Shall we try Plan B?"

Dean nodded. "Do it, but just be quick."

"Don't be afraid." said Cas. He reached out his hand and touched Dean's head.

Dean's knees almost gave way under him. His head was filled with images and words, the sight of himself, strong and wise, almost unrecognisable. Even the colours were more vivid in the angel's images of him, a saint in stained glass with a light like the glory of a sunrise.

The journey out of Hell through Cas's eyes seemed a lot less like a rescue of him and more like salvation for Castiel. In every flash of vision he saw, he saw reverence, respect, gratitude and love from Castiel and every word praised his integrity and honour and goodness. He saw the moment Cas had lost faith in God and how he had put his faith in the human wreckage he had pulled from Hell. He saw the pain Cas felt whenever he suffered, the longing to heal him, even when no healing was possible.

Cas had told the truth. There was nothing negative there. Even his acknowledged faults were injuries in Cas's mind, not character flaws. The angel loved him with an unconditional love. They were brothers and always would be. He stumbled a little and felt his friend's free hand steady him.

Then the hand moved from his head and the connection ended. He straightened up and the other hand left his arm. He stared into Castiel's eyes. "Is that real?" he asked, already knowing that it was.

"Of course." said Cas.

"Can you show that to Sam?" he said.

"Do you want me to?" said Cas.

"I don't think he would believe it unless he sees it." said Dean, "Hell, I saw it and I barely believe it."

"I thought you had at least some idea of what you would see." said Cas.

"I don't know what I expected." said Dean. His chest ached with the tension of his fears and the confusion of the truth. Even with the lightshow gone, his head seemed full of the colours. He should have been happy, to see such a positive view of himself, but it felt like a lot to live up to and he was tired of trying to match even his father's low expectations and Sam's.

Cas looked at him for a while and he wondered how much of his confusion was clear to his friend. Then Cas said, "Shall we go back to Sam?"

"Yeah." said Dean.

"If you need more time ... " said Cas.

Dean shook his head. "I'm fine." he said.

"Of course." said Cas, but he didn't head for the door. They both stood there, looking at the door. Dean wasn't ready. He did need a moment or two to collect himself. Somehow, Cas had understood that.

When he felt able to appear at least slightly relaxed, he nodded to Cas and said, "Okay, let's go."


	17. Chapter 17

_Chapter 17._

When Cas had shown Sam what he had shown Dean, Sam and Dean looked at each other for a while. Dean half expected Sam to laugh at the ridiculousness of the visions.

"May I ask which part took you by surprise?" said Sam.

"All of it?" said Dean. He had assumed Sam would bring him down to Earth with his usual brotherly mocking. "It doesn't surprise you?"

"Not really." said Sam, "That Cas loves us is not really news to me. That you and he have a special connection is obvious."

"He thinks I saved him." said Dean.

"Didn't you?" said Sam, "Without you, he'd just be another heavenly grunt, obeying orders, no offence, Cas."

"None taken." said Cas, "Without the two of you, I know exactly what I would be. I would be Uriel."

"No, that could never happen." said Dean.

"So, just to recap," said Sam, "I don't think you're a monster, Cas doesn't think you're a monster. Is it possible that you're wrong about being a monster?"

"What, because you and Cas have never been wrong about anything?" said Dean. Even as he said it, he regretted it. They were trying to help and he was sniping at them just because it felt easier. "I'm sorry." he said, "But could we focus on someone else for a while? We've talked about my issues now. They have been addressed."

"But not dealt with." said Castiel, "However, we could discuss Sam."

"Or you." said Sam.

"Outvoted, Sammy." said Dean, "We'll get to Cas."

"More beer?" said Cas to Sam sympathetically.

"More beer." said Sam.

Cas went to fetch it.

Dean smiled across the table. "It's okay, Sam, we're here to help."

Sam smiled an equally fake smile and said, "You're a jerk."

"Yeah, I know." said Dean.

Cas returned with three more bottles of beer and distributed them before sitting down again. Sam opened his and took a long drink. Dean felt a pang of conscience. He had wanted to help Sam and he had hoped this might be a way to do it, but he had also wanted the spotlight off of him and he feared he might seem to his fragile brother to have thrown him to the wolves.

"Sam," he said, "If you don't ... "

Sam raised a hand. "I'm fine. I can do this."

"Of course he can." said Castiel, "This is the one place where we can all feel safe. The one place where we have no enemies, only our brothers."

"I'm not sure what issues I need to address." said Sam.

"Nightmares, sleepless nights, never taking a day off." suggested Dean.

"When do hunters ever get a day off?" said Sam.

"Yeah, fine, but even when we do, you don't."

"When did you last take a day off?" said Sam.

"Yesterday." said Dean.

Sam looked at him in evident exasperation. "Yesterday was not exactly a normal day."

"Winchesters in disarray, avoiding talking to each other. Sounds pretty typical to me." said Cas.

"Did you sleep at all last night?" said Dean to Sam.

There was an odd look of triumph on Sam's face as he said, "Yes, actually I did."

"Two hours? Maybe three? Not necessarily consecutive?"

"Eight hours, deep sleep." said Sam.

Dean looked at Cas. "That's weird, both of us sleeping so well. Anything you want to tell me, Cas?"

"You both needed rest." said Cas, "So I ensured you got it. I put Sam to sleep. Of course, you were too far away for me to do that for you, so I just visited your dreams to make sure they didn't disturb you too much. Tonight, though, I can give you both some help to sleep."

"No, you keep your celestial roofies to yourself." said Dean. It was swiftly occurring to him that if Cas had seen his dreams, the angel must be well aware of how he had spent the night.

"Cas was just trying to help." said Sam.

"So, I'm guessing you both know there was no Monique." said Dean.

"We're not judging." said Sam.

"Just laughing quietly behind my back?"

"Just a little concerned about why you needed to lie to us like that." said Sam.

"Maybe because I was afraid you wouldn't respect my privacy if you didn't think I might be with somebody." said Dean, "Of course, it turns out, my privacy means nothing to you even when you thought I was with someone."

"No, we could tell you were lying, which is why we were worried and decided to check on you." said Cas.

"Why not just tell me you knew?" said Dean.

"When do we ever tell each other anything?" said Sam.

"Maybe it's time we did." said Dean.

"Maybe it is." said Cas.

"So, in the interests of full disclosure," said Sam, "Jody called and we all know you lied to her too."

"Oh, crap!"

"Yeah." said Sam.

"Was she angry?"

"Why would she be angry?" said Sam.

"Well, I'd be angry if you or she lied to me." said Dean.

"Yeah, because being angry is easier than being worried or hurt or confused."

"Which was she, then?"

"Worried, Dean. She was worried. You called her in the middle of the night, saying nothing much and what you did say was a lie."

"You do that a lot." said Cas.

Dean frowned at him. "Aren't we supposed to be discussing Sam?"

"Also, misdirection. You use that a lot."

"He does." said Sam.

"But, getting back to Sam, so does he." said Cas.


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18.

Sam wanted to be honest with them. He wanted to tell them about everything that troubled him, from the certainty that he would meet Lucifer again to the fact that he couldn't decide whether the British Men of Letters were clumsy friends or clever foes. He wanted to tell them, these two that he could tell anything, but never did, that missing his mother had been a lot less of a problem when she had been dead than it was now that she was alive and out there and could spend time with him if she wanted to. The part of him that had once whispered his fears to his big brother, counting on a few reassuring words to fix them, desperately wanted to say everything that was on his mind, but he was just an ordinary man and he had no right to burden the man who already had the weight of the world on his shoulders or the angel who had fallen for their sakes.

"This is where you speak." said Dean, "Come on. I was honest."

"Okay," said Sam, "I don't sleep a lot, even for a hunter. I do have nightmares. But so do you. I mean, you once threw a lamp into my bed because you were having a nightmare. Hunters don't dream of cotton candy."

"How many of your dreams are of Hell?" said Cas.

"Enough." said Sam, "Too many. But Hell's like that. It lingers. At least, thanks to you, I'm not constantly haunted by hallucinations."

Dean was frowning. Sam wasn't sure whether it was the mention of Hell reminding him of his own time there or whether he was troubled more by Sam having gone there.

"You always do this." said Dean.

"Do what?" said Sam.

"You talk like it's all just fine and normal, like you're not screaming for help in the night and spending the days wandering around like a zombie."

"I'm okay." said Sam.

He was surprised by the ferocity of Dean's response. "Yeah, you're okay. You're always okay. You've been okay since you learned to say the word and you were okay when you were chugging demon blood and you were okay when you had no soul and you were okay when you lost your mind and I'm supposed to go on believing okay when I can see how screwed your head is."

"Dean." said Cas, quietly.

"I'm sorry, but this idiot is not okay. He's never okay. He's on a curve from not okay to pretty damn far from okay and he's sliding down it like a greased kid in a play park."

"Wow." said Sam, "Weird image!"

Dean stood up and leant over him. "You say the word okay one more time and I'm gonna punch you right in the throat."

"Sit down!" said Castiel and, to everyone's surprise, Dean did.

"Like you said," said Sam, "Our okay is a little less okay than everyone else's."

"Would you like to elaborate?" said Cas.

"I don't think I can." said Sam, "Look at my brother. He's stressed because of me. I've barely said anything and he already can't handle it and you know why? Because he blames himself for all of it. He even blames himself that I ended up in Hell. My choice, my idea and he blames himself."

"I should have found another way." said Dean.

"There was no other way." said Sam firmly, "So I went to Hell and, as we've seen with Dean, Hell changes people and it left me with some scars, some trauma that I'm working through."

"Alone?" said Dean.

"In my own head." said Sam.

"I hear you yell stuff in the night, but when I check on you, you won't talk about it."

"Talking about Hell doesn't help, remember?" said Sam.

"A burden shared ... "

"I will never share that burden with you, because you will never stop trying to make it your fault."

"It was my fault." said Dean, "Do you really think I feel better because you won't tell me about it?"

Sam slumped over the table, closing his eyes for a moment.

"Sam?" said Dean, standing up again, a note of fear in his voice.

Sam looked up. "Dean, I lost everything in the cage. They tore it all away from me, faith, hope, dignity, strength and will. You know the one tiny bit of control I had left? Deciding not to ever let you suffer that with me."

"I suffered. I suffer now, thinking about you in that cage."

"I know, but I can stop you from going through some of that pain. I will stop you, Dean, because protecting you in that weak, limited way is the only small victory I have."

"Your victory is Lucifer conquered. I don't need your damn protection!" said Dean.

Castiel intervened. "Sam, Dean, please cut back on the over-protective brotherly love before one of you punches the other."

"He's only my brother when he feels like it." said Dean.

"Like I'm only your friend when I want something?" said Cas.

"I told you I didn't mean that." said Dean.

"I know, and you don't mean this, either." said Cas, "You love Sam more than any other being in the world or beyond it. You're angry now because you love him and you can't bear the fact that he won't let you share his pain. And he won't let you share it because he loves you. This is precisely the problem we need to fix."

"This is a problem we can't fix." said Dean.

"On that, we agree." said Sam.

"You are both blinded by your need to protect each other." said Cas, "Also, you're missing something fairly obvious. Dean, I went into your Hell to drag you out. Sam, I did the same for you, then took on your memories of Hell and your hallucinations."

"Yes," said Sam, "And we're very grateful. Don't ever think we're not ... "

"You could talk to me, Sam. I know it all already. You could both always talk to me about what you went through. I won't be shocked or hurt by it. I don't blame myself for either of you going there ... well, not like each of you does. I am uniquely placed to listen."

"That's actually a good point." said Sam.

"Wait, so you could talk to him?" said Dean.

"I don't know. It's kinda hard to talk about at all, but he does already know a lot of it and he won't feel like he let me go. I know you want me to talk to you, Dean, but I just can't. When I mention Hell, the look in your eyes scares me."

"You should see your face when someone mentions Lucifer." said Dean.

"I know. I've tried so hard to bury him, but just knowing he exists ... "

"I would rather face my Hell or yours ten times over than ever have let that cockroach within a hundred miles of you." said Dean.

"You see why I can't talk about it with you?" said Sam.

Dean turned away, as if his shoulders didn't tell Sam every thought in his head. When he turned back, he said, "You think you can talk to Cas?"

"I think there's a chance." said Sam.

"Well, I'd still rather you talked to me, but if you really can't do that ..." he lifted his hand to fend off Sam's attempt to reply, "And I get that you feel you can't ... Well, Cas is a good second choice. Okay. I'll stop trying to make you talk if you promise to try to talk to him."

"Yeah, I'll try." said Sam, "Will you?"

Dean shook his head.

"As he said, he already knows it." said Sam.

"You were an innocent victim." said Dean.

"So were you." said Sam.

"No, Sam, I wasn't."

"You went to Hell to save my life. You were forced to become a torturer. You've been trying to make up for it ever since. Alistair was a monster. You never were."

"I was as bad as him, maybe worse. He was a demon. I chose to act like one." said Dean, "Now, I don't want to discuss this anymore, not with Cas, not with you, not with anyone. I don't even want to think about it."

"But you do think about it." said Sam, "Why do Cas and I have to deal with our issues while you get to keep yours forever?"

"Because neither of you deserves to be tortured forever."

"And you do?" said Sam.

"I've done things, in Hell and after, that mean I deserve far worse than that." said Dean.

"What things?" said Sam, "Because most of the bad stuff you've done, I was right there beside you. If you're a monster, so am I. And I spent a year without a soul."

"I was an actual demon."

"And I released the Leviathans." said Cas, "We've all made mistakes."

"I made decisions, choices." said Dean, "I chose to be a torturer."

Cas handed his angel blade to Sam. "Take this."

"Why?" said Sam.

"Because the urge to hit him with it is returning." said Cas.

"It's getting late." said Sam, "Maybe we should eat." Moving them into the kitchen felt like a good idea and an offer of food usually got through to Dean, even when he was a wreck.

This time, Sam wasn't sure it was going to work. Dean looked at him in momentary confusion. He opened his mouth to speak and then looked around the room, as if lost.

"Are you okay?" said Sam.

Dean looked at him again and said, "It's too late for me, Sam. I am what I am and I chose to be it. I deserve all of it."

"No, Dean, you don't." said Sam.

"We should concentrate on what can be fixed and that's you and Cas." said Dean.

"Whatever I am, I have been for thousands of years." said Cas.

"Time for a change." said Dean.

"Everyone but you?" said Cas.

"Every mistake you made was made for the best of motives." said Dean to the angel.

"So were all of yours." said Sam, "Most of them for me. So please, Dean, take away the guilt I feel and stop blaming yourself for everything."

Cas headed for the kitchen. "I'll cook. Any requests?"

"Find anything fryable and fry it." said Dean.


	19. Chapter 19

_Chapter 19._

Sam looked at the unhealthy, delicious mess on the plate and then at his brother, who was already eagerly attacking the food. "Cas, you certainly fried all that was fryable." he said.

"Yeah," said Dean, "You are a great cook."

"Of course, our arteries may, at some point, regret this." said Sam.

Dean chuckled. "Mine have to be used to it by now."

"I stand ready to heal the consequences of any bad decisions." said Cas.

"Some of my bad decisions are pretty damn good." said Dean.

Sam smiled at the change in Dean. He knew it was all surface stuff. Underneath, Dean was still a mess, but the fact that he could hide it, forget it, even for a short time, was a hopeful sign. Dean was still strong, still fighting in his own way, even if he himself did not believe he could win. Sam wanted to tell him how much he loved that, but knew any attempt would be repelled instantly.

He began to eat, trying not to look too much at Dean. He didn't want him to feel he was under surveillance. He glanced occasionally at Cas, who stood watching them both. He didn't need food and took little interest in it. Even the siren call of bacon had no effect on Heavenly beings. Sam found that very sad.

He looked at the clock. "It's almost 10. After this, do we want to carry on talking or do we take the rest of the night off and come at it fresh tomorrow?"

"The second one gets my vote." said Dean.

Cas said nothing. Sam wasn't sure if he felt it was not for him to offer an opinion or if he just had no opinion to offer.

"Cas?" he said.

"Hard to say." said Cas, "In some ways, you two may talk more as you get more tired."

"As our guard drops, he means." said Dean.

"On the other hand, you are also more likely to become defensive, even paranoid, as Dean just did. We want progress."

"Is progress even possible?" said Dean, "A lot of the stuff we're talking about is not easily fixed, if it can be fixed."

"Dean is right." said Cas, "And it will be harder to fix if Dean feels that his problems should not be fixed because they are a deserved punishment for ... well, for being Dean Winchester. Which, personally, I see as more of an affliction than a crime."

"Is that an insult?" said Dean.

"No," said Sam, "That's Cas talking sense."

"Ah, that'll be why I didn't recognise it." said Dean.

Cas gave him a look, but said nothing.

"Just kidding." said Dean.

"What we need," said Sam, "Is to commit to a new approach. We should come up with an agreement that addresses everyone's concerns and offers a way to deal with everyone's problems. For example, I will agree to talk to Cas about Hell. We all come up with real, practical ways to ... not fix, maybe, but at least tackle our own issues and help each other. We can call it the Winchester Pact."

"Pact makes it sound like a demon deal." said Dean, "I don't like those."

"Really?" said Sam, "Because you've made more of them than any of us."

"I'm not technically a Winchester." said Cas.

"You have another last name?" said Dean.

"No."

"Then shut up and stick with Winchester."

"Cas, you're one of us." said Sam.

"Thanks." said Cas, still frowning at Dean.

"You get that look from Mom." said Dean.

"That's impossible." said Castiel.

"Impossible is what we do." said Dean.

Sam smiled to himself. Although Cas might have trouble translating it, Dean's casual mockery was one of the clearest ways in which he said, "I love you." Of course Cas was a Winchester, to both of them. He was more a Winchester than Adam could ever have been. Dean showed his affection in odd ways, perhaps, but it was there. Angels were dicks, except Cas. Without his powers that time, Cas had been a baby in a trench coat, but Dean still kept him around. Cas had stone cold betrayed them and nobody who betrayed Dean was ever forgiven, except Sam and Cas, his brothers.

Sam looked into Castiel's eyes. As usual, it was hard to tell what he was thinking, but Sam decided he might need to hear more from Dean than brotherly teasing. "By the way," said Sam, "The celestial Winchester did a little editing of databases for us."

"Wow! Talk nerdy to me." said Dean.

"Law enforcement databases." said Sam.

"Oh, that sounds interesting." said Dean.

"He managed to erase all references to us and to the Impala." said Sam.

Dean looked at Cas and raised an eyebrow. "You can do that?"

"Turns out I can." said Cas, "There will still be physical files, but with nothing to link them across a distance, the chances of anyone noticing them or you have dropped considerably."

Dean nodded. "Cool."

"I would have done it sooner." said Cas, "I'm afraid it never entered my head."

"It would never have entered mine, either." said Dean, "I don't know what we'd do without you, Cas."

Cas smiled.

"As a reward, I'll take you out in the Impala sometime, give you some driving lessons."

"I can drive!" said Cas, instantly affronted.

"You drive like a ninety year old lady on her way to church. I'll teach you how to drive like a Winchester." said Dean.

Cas looked at Sam and Sam nodded encouragingly. "He means thanks, Cas." Sam said, "Don't you, Dean?"

"Yeah, I said thanks." said Dean, who hadn't and who probably knew he hadn't.

"So, do we go back to the library, or get some sleep?" said Sam.

"Celestial roofies available to anyone who wants them." said Cas.

"I'm good." said Dean, getting up and putting his plate by the sink. He quickly left the room.

Sam took his own plate to the sink and quickly washed both.

"He's still angry with me, isn't he?" said Cas.

"No, he's just afraid." said Sam.

"Of me?" said Cas, "But then, you were afraid too, last night."

"It's complicated." said Sam.

"And showing him what I think of him didn't help as much as I'd hoped."

"Yeah, well, that's complicated too."

"Do you think he'll sleep tonight?" asked Cas.

"Not a wink." said Sam.

"So tomorrow, he'll be bad-tempered and anxious and uncooperative."

"Yeah, he'll still be Dean."

"And you?"

"Me?" said Sam, "I'll take the celestial roofies."


	20. Chapter 20

_Chapter 20._

Dean lay on his bed in the dark. He didn't really want to sleep. He'd just needed to get away from the constant pressure to talk. He'd tried cooperating. He'd tried hard. For Sam's sake, he had really wanted to do whatever he could, but every moment of discussion merely underlined for him the benefits of burying his feelings and just getting on with the job. Saving people was what mattered, helping all those who could be helped and in his estimation, that list included Sam and definitely did not include him.

He wasn't happy with his parting words. "I'm good." sounded fine, in principle, but they were a rejection of Castiel's kind offer to grant oblivion for the night and he knew that they had sounded cold and dismissive, even resentful. Maybe the reference to celestial roofies had annoyed him. Maybe it had been meant to. Cas had been letting him know that his hurtful jibes did not go unnoticed.

Sometimes he wondered why he couldn't avoid causing conflict with Cas. Cas was not like other angels, but he still was one and the righteous certainty still reared its head at times. That was a reason to be irritated.

But then, he was equally irritated by the deep self-doubt that Castiel felt; his fear of being mistaken, after so many catastrophic mistakes and Dean understood where that came from, but he was impatient with every hesitation that sprang from it.

He was annoyed when Cas seemed indifferent to them and uncomfortable when Cas seemed to care too much and he was sarcastic and cruel when Cas needed him to be sympathetic and kind.

And he hated how Cas made him feel about himself. He hated the faith in him that he could not fathom and the sudden doubts that were all too understandable. He resented being loved by someone who knew his faults. He had that problem with Sam too.

Maybe the problem wasn't Cas. Maybe the problem was that Dean had stopped believing in unconditional love when he was a little kid, trying hard not to cry in case his pain caused more misery for his father. His mom had loved him, then she had been snatched from him in the most terrible way possible and he had heard her scream and had run to the nursery, opened the door and seen ...

Well, that thought had put any idea of sleep out of his mind. He'd run from the nursery. He'd seen his dad run into the room and then suddenly, Sam was in his arms and he was running from the house, Sam the only thought in his head. Everything else was flame and fear. He could still remember the feel of the baby in his arms, the sound of his father's voice, the last look at his mother's face. He remembered promises from his father on the hood of the Impala, promises that he barely believed even then. Maybe he was not allowed love. Maybe the universe would always ensure that he was alone.

Except, he had Sam and he had Cas and they did love him. So why did he feel like any kind of love was purely temporary, until they died in some horrible way or until they saw how unworthy he was.

Then there was all the Destiel crap. It was weird enough to be a fictional character in the eyes of all the fans of those damn books, but to know that some of the readers actually speculated about him and Cas in that way made him deeply cautious about giving them any reason to think like that. He also worried about how Cas would feel if he ever found out about that. Would he assume there must be something in it? Would he then worry about what Dean's actual feelings and intentions were?

Finally, there was the guilt. So much of what had befallen Cas would never have happened had he not met the Winchesters. Apparently, Cas saw him as a saviour, but Dean often felt he was a jinx.

Someone knocked on the door.

"What is it?" he said, turning on the light.

"Could we talk for a minute?" said Cas.

"Yeah, come in." said Dean. He sat up.

Cas opened the door and came in. "Sam's asleep."

"You zapped him asleep?" said Dean.

"Yes. He agreed to it."

"Sit." said Dean, gesturing to the end of the bed.

Cas sat. "Are you okay?" he said.

"Yeah, I'm okay. You?" said Dean. It was a meaningless ritual exchange.

"As always." said Cas. He looked troubled.

"You wanted to talk about something?" said Dean.

"I wanted to say that it's fine." said Cas.

"What is?"

"I'm sorry if offering to 'zap' you made you uncomfortable. I mean I understand that it's complicated for you ... and for Sam, actually. He hates it too."

"I thought you said he said yes." said Dean. He was aware that angels did not have a very sophisticated understanding of consent.

"He did, but he still doesn't like it and I don't really know why, but I know it's a thing that bothers both of you, so I'm not offended." He sighed. "I just wish you'd let me help you."

"Yeah, well, I can't." said Dean, "And I'm sorry that I can't."

"Can you tell me why? Can you tell me why you and Sam don't trust me?"

"It's not that. It's never that. Look, we're just not good at surrender. Ask Zachariah, ask Michael, ask Lucifer. We just can't let go of control over our own lives. It's nothing personal, I swear. It just goes against every instinct we have. Do you understand?"

Cas nodded. "I think so."

"By the way, I know I seem unhelpful, but I really do want this to work. Sam needs this. I think you do too."

"Just us?" said Cas sadly.

"I need you two to be okay." said Dean, "So it helps me too."

"What I showed you made no difference at all, did it?" said Cas.

Dean didn't answer for a moment. He remembered seeing himself as Cas saw him. All that glory, all that pain and the depth of love that Cas felt for him.

"I thought it would help." said Cas.

"Yeah." said Dean.

They sat in awkward silence. Dean looked into his friend's eyes and saw his own fear reflected back at him. There had to be some collection of words that would make sense of everything and tell Cas that there was no reason to worry about the future of their friendship, but Dean had no idea what it was.

Cas also seemed to be searching for the right thing to say and he was clearly having no more success than Dean. Maybe he needed an act of faith.

"If I hadn't said no in front of Sam, I'd let you do it." he said, "I'd let you zap me to sleep."

"Sam doesn't need to know." said Cas, "I could wake you before he wakes."

"And lie to him?" said Dean.

"If necessary." said Cas.

"You'd be okay with that?"

"I don't like it, but if it's the only way ... "

"You think I'm being an idiot." said Dean.

"I think you're showing a lot of courage." said Cas.

"This whole thing freaks me out." said Dean.

"I know." said Cas.

Dean nodded. "Okay. Do it. But wake me at least an hour before Sam." He made himself comfortable on the bed.

Cas stood and walked to the head of the bed. "Are you ready?" he said.

"No," said Dean, "But do it anyway."

As Castiel touched his forehead, his eyes closed and he fell into a deep sleep.


	21. Chapter 21

_Chapter 21._

Sam found Dean in the library. "How long have you been up?" he asked, surprised that Dean was awake before him.

"A couple of hours." said Dean.

"Where's Cas?" said Sam.

"I sent him to fetch the mail and to pick up a few other things."

"Did we need anything else?" said Sam.

"Not really, but we all need to get out of the bunker sometimes. Cas wastes enough of his time on us."

"Did you two argue after I went to bed?" said Sam.

"No." said Dean, quickly, "Look, are you keeping an eye on things? We haven't hunted in a few days."

"Things are quiet." said Sam. There was no need to go into detail.

"As long as you're on top of things." said Dean.

"Did you get any sleep?"

"Yeah, actually, I did. I think all that talking yesterday wore me out. How about you?"

"I just gave in and let Cas put me to sleep." said Sam.

"Don't start depending on that." said Dean.

"Why not?"

"Because Cas is not here to put us to sleep, cook for us and heal our injuries. Cas is not our Mom."

"Are you angry with me?" said Sam.

"Am I punching you?"

"No."

"Then I'm not angry with you." Dean stood up. "Sam, forget it. I'm just struggling with the whole openness thing. Talking like we have been is just hard for me."

"I know." said Sam.

"I want to get this right. I want it to work, I honestly do. It's just hard and it goes against who I am, who I've always been."

"I get it." said Sam, "Do you think I haven't noticed how you bury your feelings so you can take care of everybody else? Of course opening up is hard, because you've told yourself since you were four years old that everybody else's feelings are more important. I know you think I see you as cold and shut down, but that's not true. You've just never allowed yourself to indulge your own needs when there was someone else to worry about."

Dean smiled. "You and Cas, you keep translating my antisocial attitude into something else entirely."

"We see you clearly, that's why it freaks you out, having both of us here, talking about you."

"What freaks me out more is how much you worry about Cas." said Dean, looking at him shrewdly, "I mean, is Sastiel a thing?"

"Sastiel? No! Dean, are you gonna ship us like a fifteen year old girl?"

"I'm just asking. I saw the way you looked at him last night. I see the way you keep trying to put things right when I say the wrong thing. Cas said he and I have a more profound bond, but I'm not sure that's true." He walked the length of the library, still talking, "It would be fine, you know. I'd be fine with it."

"Did you stay up all night drinking?" said Sam.

Dean started walking back. "Truth is, I would love to see him happy. I'd love to see both of you happy."

"Dean, haven't you noticed I am as straight as you are?" said Sam.

"Okay, so what is it between you and Cas?" said Dean, sitting down again.

"Friendship." said Sam, "Oh, and the fact that I know how much you need him. Of course I try to smooth things over between you, because someone has to. You forget that he's not used to having friends, especially friends like you."

"Like me how?" said Dean.

"Difficult, unstable, volatile."

Dean looked offended for a moment, then gave the smallest of nods. "Okay." he said.

"I'm sorry." said Sam.

"For being right?"

"I know it's a cardinal sin in your eyes." said Sam. He had not expected Dean to agree with him so easily.

"I'm glad someone is looking after the angel, because you're right, I do sometimes forget that he can be hurt." said Dean, "I mean, he's the size of the Chrysler Building and can burn demons to a toasty crisp and sometimes that means that I think of him as indestructible. And he's not."

"No, he's not." said Sam.

"I have a mouth that runs a mile ahead of my brain." said Dean.

"Yes, I'm familiar with it." said Sam.

"Half the time, the sarcasm is flowing before I hear the end of the sentence I'm responding to." said Dean.

"Did you really think Sastiel was a thing?" said Sam.

Dean grinned. "Nah. He's out of your league."

"Thanks."


	22. Chapter 22

_Chapter 22._

When Cas returned, Sam and Dean were both still in the library, Sam on his tablet, Dean looking at his phone. Dean stood as Cas came in. "Good trip, Cas?" he asked.

Cas handed him a small pile of mail. "I think so." he said.

Dean sorted through it quickly. There was nothing important. "Thanks for getting this." he said.

"As you said, it's a chance to get out of the bunker." said Cas.

Dean saw Sam's look. He wished Sam didn't overanalyse everything. He knew Sam was thinking he'd needed time away from Cas. It was actually the opposite. He felt Cas needed some time away from them.

"I've been making some notes for the Winchester Pact." said Sam.

Dean groaned. "It's early. Couldn't you just look at porn like everybody else?"

"What happened to wanting this to work?" said Sam.

"Okay, whatever. You work on your notes, you sick pervert."

"How am I the pervert?" said Sam, grinning.

"Hey, it's normal to like sex." said Dean, "Liking pacts and contracts, that's kinky. And I mean Crowley-kinky."

"Dean is in a weird mood, Cas." said Sam.

Cas looked at Dean and smiled. "He seems fine to me."

Dean went over to look at the tablet. "Can I add something?"

"Of course." said Sam.

"Can we ditch the word okay forever?"

"I doubt it." said Cas.

"Why not?" said Dean.

Cas turned to Sam, "How are you, Sam?"

"Okay." said Sam.

"You, Dean?"

"I'm fine." said Dean, "Get to the point."

"It's automatic, for all three of us." said Cas.

"Right," said Dean, "I have a way to get around that. Let's agree that we all get to say fine, okay or whatever, true or not, without anyone judging. Sometimes we all need to fake feeling fine and sometimes, it'll suit the others to believe it. But if they ask a second time, they're saying they want the truth and they can handle the truth and we drop the act and give them the truth."

Sam nodded. "That's actually a good idea."

"I do have them, sometimes." said Dean, "Here's another. We try ... and I know this won't be easy for any of us, but we try to tell each other when we are not okay and need support or sympathy, or someone to drink a beer with. We learn the phrase, 'I'm not okay.' The three of us ... we're all we have and sometimes we act like we're alone."

"You two also need to pray more." said Cas, "I don't mean to you know who, but to me. If I'm not here and you need me, talk to me. I will always hear you. I will always care."

"Yeah, we'll try." said Dean, "But in return, you promise to come to us when there's a problem, even if it's a heavenly one and you think it's beyond our understanding. You tell us what's bothering you. You let us help if we can and if we can't, you let us worry with you."

"And weigh you down even more?" said Cas.

"That's right." said Dean, "That's how it works."

"So that would apply to your problems too?" said Cas, "Even when you think you know how to deal with them or you think I have no solution to offer?"

"I just said I'd try." said Dean.

"Try is a sneaky little word." said Cas.

"It is. That's why I've always liked it." said Dean.

"How will this ever work?" said Sam.

"Because it has to." said Dean, "Because we need each other."

"We always have," said Sam, "But we still avoid asking for help."

Dean looked at Sam, fighting against every instinct that told him to stay strong, to pretend he didn't ever need help. Even as the words came out, his throat tried to drag them back. "There are days, Sam, when I really need your help. There are times when I want to track down Ben and Lisa, not to drag them back into this mess, but just to make sure they're safe. I know I can't do that. I'm not strong enough to know I could keep my mouth shut and leave them in peace. I just want to do it. Because I know I left them in danger."

"They're fine." said Cas, very quietly.

"They're fine?" said Dean, his voice cracking a little, "How do you know that?"

"Because I check on them from time to time." said Cas.

"You too?" said Sam.

Dean looked from one to the other. "You what now?" he said, "You're both checking on them?"

"Dean, I stole a year of their lives. I wiped their memories. I'm the one who put them in danger." said Cas.

"Because I told you to. And at the time, I think you would have done anything I asked."

"Still my choice and my responsibility. So I make sure that they have what they need and that they are not under any threat, from anyone."

"And you never thought to tell me?" said Dean.

"You never asked me to wipe your memories of them." said Cas.

"No." said Dean, hoping Cas would not ask why.

"You never asked me to check on them or to tell you anything about them."

"No, but you knew I would want to know." said Dean.

"All I knew was that anything connected to them hurt you. Even the sight of a school bus could be painful for you. Mine was the sin, the theft of their memories. Mine was the suffering of looking at what I had done. You would never have asked me to wipe your memory. I couldn't grant you peace, but I could avoid giving you constant reminders of the pain."

"And I didn't tell you because you said you'd break my nose if I mentioned either of them to you again." said Sam, "But they were your family, for a time, so they were mine too and I just keep an eye on them."

"And they're okay?" said Dean.

"Yes." said Cas, "Ben is doing well at school and Lisa is well and happy and hopeful."

"Is she with someone?" said Dean.

"Do you really want to know that, or anything?" said Cas.

"No, I guess not." said Dean, "Do you think I did the wrong thing, asking you to remove all trace of me from their lives?"

Cas thought for a moment. "I think it made them safer, if not happier."

"I was looking for a yes or no." said Dean.

"How is he supposed to answer that?" said Sam, "You know it was a terrible thing to do, but maybe it was the only thing you could do to keep them safe and God knows, you will do anything to keep any of us safe.?"

"You've never asked whether I could restore their memories." said Cas.

Dean shook his head. "If I ever do, tell me no, you can't." he said.

Sam frowned. "Dean, that is all kinds of messed up."

"Are you starting to see why I need you?" said Dean, "I've been all kinds of messed up all my life. Lisa and Ben were a dream. I have one year of great memories and that's a lot more than I deserve. The only family I can ever really have is in this bunker. At least I can't screw you two up any more than I already have."

"We could tell you how they are sometimes." said Cas.

"No," said Dean, "If they needed protection, you'd tell me, right?"

"Instantly." said Cas.

"It's enough to know you're both looking out for them." said Dean.

"Why don't you get to have a life outside hunting?" said Sam.

"None of us ever had a life outside hunting." said Dean, "And every time we've tried, people ended up getting hurt. Now we might one day find a way to make this bunker safe enough for you to keep a wife and kids here and we may even find someone for Cas, an angel, maybe. What we will never find is a way for me to walk out of the shadows and live like a normal person, because the shadows are part of me."

"Bullcrap." said Sam, "Family is at the heart of everything you do. Don't pull this lone wolf baloney on me. I'm the one you used to cook for in cold motel rooms when you were seven."

"I think ... " Dean began. He considered for a moment and said, "I think I think too much. I need to get out of my head for a while. Does anyone mind if I spend a couple of hours in the gym?"

"Sounds like a good idea." said Cas, "Sam and I need to strategise anyway."

"You need to what?"

"He means we need to talk." said Sam.

"Why do I feel plotted against?" said Dean.

"I told you," said Cas, "Bunker mentality, paranoia, general distrust of your closest friends."

"Also, you two openly plotting against me." said Dean.

"That too, but we mean well." said Cas.


	23. Chapter 23

_Chapter 23._

Dean had worked up quite a sweat before he could get past thoughts of Ben and Lisa. The guilt would always be there. He had known before he turned up on their doorstep that he was never going to live a normal life or be a normal person.

He'd gone there because he promised Sam, just before Sam sacrificed himself to put Lucifer in his cage. He'd forced himself to go there, for Sam's sake. Sam's dying wish had been fulfilled. His own longing for a family life had also compelled him, but all the time, there was a little voice in his head saying, "No, Dean, you can't have this. You know you can't have this."

Lisa had cared about him. Maybe she wasn't in love with him, but she loved him and maybe he wasn't in love with her, but he was willing to dedicate the rest of his life to convincing both her and himself that he was. She had said she knew it was over when Sam came back. He should have known too.

It wasn't that Lisa didn't matter, it was that he had needed Sam to fill the void in his life. He had needed his brother home, whole and healed, to silence the guilt and the shame and the feeling of failure. Lisa and Ben had been a chance to succeed at being part of a family, but it could never have wiped out the earlier failure - all the Winchesters dead, all because he had failed every single one of them.

Sam had not come back whole, but he had come back and Dean had the chance to put things right. He didn't love Lisa and Ben less than before. He had wanted to blend his two families together. He told himself he would find a way. He knew, all the time, that he was lying.

Ben felt like his kid. He knew Ben looked up to him like a father. Sometimes, Ben seemed like a younger version of him, only the Dean he could have been, if shotgun drill had never replaced playing with toy cars. Sometimes, painfully, Ben seemed like Sam, gazing at him in absolute worship and trusting him for guidance and protection, blind to his faults, ready to excuse any failure.

There were three good reasons ... well, reasons why he had never asked Cas to remove his memories of them. The first was practical. If they were in danger, he needed to know about it, so he could fix the problem. He had always intended to watch over them from a distance, although, when the time came, he had been unable to go looking for them, afraid that he would start the whole mess again.

The second reason was that it had been a good year. He had four years of happy childhood to cling to and one year of being a dad and taking care of his own family and all five years of happiness made the rest of his life a little easier to bear.

The third reason was more akin to the angel blade incident than he could have explained. The memories cut like a knife and he deserved the pain, but it was more than that. As long as he felt that pain, the regret, the guilt, he could believe he was still human, still real, still capable of feeling.

He wasn't very surprised that Sam and Cas were looking after Lisa and Ben, though it saddened him to think that Cas blamed himself. When Dean had asked what he asked, both he and Cas believed their friendship was dead. Dean considered the threat to Lisa and Ben unforgivable and although Cas had said he had not known, Dean neither knew nor cared whether that might be true.

Things looked different at this end of things. The memory of Michael's lance almost ending Cas was too recent and too raw. Cas had begged them to leave him and Dean and Sam had both preferred to stay and die if necessary.

The truth was, nothing Cas had ever done had been done for bad reasons. His moral compass sometimes went into a flat spin, but he always did what he felt was right and Dean knew now that he would never have knowingly or willingly allowed anyone Dean loved to come to harm. It seemed he would also never forgive himself for having allowed it unknowingly, though Dean had long ago forgiven him. The added weight of having stolen a year of their memories was making it even worse for Cas and Dean knew that was entirely his fault.

As he let the physical exertion push away all those thoughts, another came unbidden to his mind. Every time he said he could not have a family, Sam defended him as a family man. Sam still saw him through the eyes of a kid who needed him. Sam had never had even four years of a normal childhood. He looked at Mary in awe and feared asking her for anything. He didn't know what he had missed. He thought Dean was a wonderful brother, because Dean had shown him a little care and kindness.

Dean, though, had seen all the times his care was less than it should be, all the mistakes, all the times one kid had not known enough to take proper care of the other. He knew he was not perfect, or close to it. He knew Sam's view of him was a false one. He was torn between wanting to live up to it, to keep Sam thinking of him as a good person and wanting to tell Sam, "The stuff you remember is all wrong. I only just managed not to let you die." Maybe Sam would expect less of him if he saw him as he really was.

He had excuses. He had been young himself. He had no idea how to look after anyone. He had done his best, but his best had been almost useless. He remembered locking himself into the bathroom to cry into a towel, because hearing him cry freaked his brother out. He remembered staring into his own terrified face in the mirror, forcing it into a much less disturbing expression, washing away any trace of tears as a plaintive voice called through the door, "I'm hungry, Dean. When's breakfast?"

He'd faked a smile and a swagger and he'd gone out there to feed his little brother. The smile had become a little more real when Sam had said, "This is great! You always make the best breakfasts!" Now, that just seemed more pitiful. Sam had never had a decent breakfast. He had never known what good food looked or tasted like.

Dean put on some boxing gloves and beat the punchbag into insensibility, wishing he could do the same to himself. Failed brother, failed father, failed boyfriend. Hunting was the only thing he had ever been good at.


	24. Chapter 24

_Chapter 24._

"Is it good or bad that he's talking about Ben and Lisa?" said Cas.

"Any time he's talking has to be good, right?" said Sam.

"Except that he's now avoiding any discussion again." said Cas.

"But working out his frustrations in the gym beats crossing state lines again."

"So, you've been watching over them too?"

Sam nodded. "I know it would kill him if anything happened to them. Any particular reason why you let him think she might be with someone?"

"It's easier for all of us."

"The process can be reversed, can't it?" said Sam.

"Easier if I don't answer that, too. Let's not have more secrets springing up between the two of you."

"But you keeping secrets is fine?" said Sam.

Castiel moved his chair from the corner to the side of the table, where it usually resided. He sat down opposite Sam. "He knows I'm keeping it a secret and he wants it that way. Secrets are really a very important part of our relationship. There are things I will never tell him. There are things he will never tell me. There are whole aspects of our lives that we never even hint at. Then again, there are things he can only say to me and things I can only say to him."

"Because neither of you trusts me enough?" said Sam.

"Because there is a bond between saviour and saved. Because there is a link there which allows some things to be shared that are generally kept from anyone else."

"And he sees you as his saviour and you see him as yours." said Sam, remembering the vision Castiel had shown him.

"I do trust you, Sam. In fact, it's an odd thing, but you and Dean are the only confessors I have. Things I cannot tell my superiors, my comrades, anyone, I can tell both of you. But there are things I can only tell Dean."

"Yeah, okay. I get that."

"Of course, I also tell you things I could never tell Dean, like that I know what Destiel is. I also know about Sastiel, but I can say that to you, because I think you're more relaxed about the whole thing."

"The whole thing is hilarious." said Sam.

"And I can tell you how afraid I am of failing him again, of letting him down. Because Dean has never let me down and I seem to do nothing else. Any time I want to talk about my mistakes, he just dismisses them. He says it's all forgotten ... like anything is ever forgotten by Dean. He says, 'It was a long time ago.' Like the passage of time fixes a knife in the back."

"He has forgiven it all." said Sam, "I know the wounds don't heal quickly with Dean, but he really has forgiven them all."

"But will he forgive the next time and the time after that?"

"He has with me." said Sam, "He will with you. Dean has two settings, family and not family. If you're not family and you let him down once, it's over. He will never forget or forgive and, if he can screw you over twenty years down the road, he'll do it, just for the fun of it. But you and me, we're family to him. He'll forgive and forget again and again and again. Which is just as well, when you remember how often we've both screwed up."

Cas smiled at him. "You are far too hard on yourself." he said.

"Family trait." said Sam, "You and Dean are just as bad. Mom too. She's not finding it easy to fit back into the family. She expects us to blame her for everything that happened, I think."

"One of the things Dean won't discuss with me." said Cas.

"He won't discuss her with anyone. They're so alike. They both just walk away rather than dealing with anything difficult."

"Yes, but I understand in her case. She must feel like she caused everything that ever went wrong in your lives."

"She made a deal to save Dad." said Sam, "Just like Dad made a deal to save Dean and Dean made a deal to save me."

"Does she know about any of that?" said Cas.

"No, of course not." said Sam, "But even so, she must understand, saving Dad is the reason we both exist. If she hadn't, there would be no Winchester family."

"But still, to know that you caused suffering to the people you love most ... " Cas began and Sam saw the guilt in his eyes again.

"I can match every mistake you ever made." he said.

"Angels are not supposed to make mistakes." said Cas.

"Even archangels make mistakes. I can't think of one who hasn't. Can you?"

"I can't think of any angel who hasn't." said Cas, "But still ... "

"But still nothing. We've all made mistakes. We all have to forgive ourselves and move on, but Dean won't and Mom won't and you won't."

"And you have?" said Cas.

Sam looked across the table. "Look at the role models I have!"

"I have you and Dean." said Cas.

Sam was about to object that they could not be role models for someone who had been around a lot longer than either of them, but he knew they were. "You're screwed." he said.

Cas nodded. "That's my assessment also."


	25. Chapter 25

_Chapter 25._

Dean lay on his bed. The workout and the shower had helped a lot and he was feeling, if not relaxed, at least less explosive. He had changed back into his regular clothes and when he moved, he felt the phone in his pocket and thought of Jody. He didn't want things to be weird between them. He called her.

"Dean?" she said, "How are you doing?"

"Hey, Jody." he said, "I just thought it was time to face the music. Sam told me you called. I'm sorry."

"No problem." she said, "Sam explained that you had some stuff to deal with. He said you all did. You're back there now, right? You're dealing with it?"

"Yeah, trying to."

"Well, that's all you can do. And hey, you need to know, Dean, you can call me any time, for any reason and if you can't tell me why you're calling, that's okay. If you just need a friendly voice on the end of the line, here I am. You don't owe me explanations. You, of all people, don't owe me a damn thing. I owe you, forever."

"No you don't. What did I ever do but bring trouble your way?" He smiled as he spoke. Jody had always been a good friend to him.

"Because of you, I have the girls." she said, "You gave me a family and they gave me a reason to keep going, to believe in the future."

"Yeah, well, you're family to me too." he said.

"Yes, we are. You never ask for much, Dean, but I want you to feel that you can ask for anything. You and Sam are the heart of this huge, weird, chosen family of ours. If I called you needing anything, I know you wouldn't let me down, so just remember it works both ways."

"I'm glad you don't want an explanation, because I don't think I could come up with one." he said.

"Let me try. Things at home got too stressful, so you needed to get away, but you wanted to talk to someone. When you called me, maybe you were about to tell me stuff and maybe you weren't, but you needed a friend and I was the friend you picked. You either never intended to go into details or you found you couldn't when the time came, so we talked about nothing, but we still talked and hopefully, it helped, just to know someone out here cares about you."

Dean chuckled. "It's a mom thing, right, the way you always know everything?"

"I think so. Did it help?"

"Yeah, it did." he said.

"Good." said Jody, "Now, what do you need? I can back off into the shadows and pretend nothing happened, or I can be there in a few hours or you can pick a weekend and come here and talk or brood or hike or whatever you want."

"Things get busy around here." he said, "But when I have a weekend spare, I'll come and see you."

"And I never switch this phone off. So if you ever need to talk or just hear a friendly silence, call me."

"I love you, Jody." he said.

"Of course you do. I'm the only person in your life who can cook. Look, I don't wanna pry, but Sam said you have a lot to deal with. He also said the two of you aren't fighting, so that's good. Are you okay, Dean?"

"I think I am." he said, "The plan is to learn from past mistakes, which means talking about stuff I'd rather not think about, but it seems to be working."

"It's never easy, to change lifelong patterns. Always worth it, though."

"I always thought I was past the possibility for change." he said.

"That's how patterns convince you not to change them." she said.

"It feels like I'm fighting who I am." he said.

"No, you're the one fighting. What you're fighting is something else. I bet you feel tense. A tightness across the chest, a feeling like there's not enough air, a sense of dread?"

"You're good."

"Breathe, slowly and deeply. Remember who you are. You're Dean Winchester. Demons check under their beds for you. You got this, kiddo."

"When I come, I will be bringing the best Scotch I can find."

"So I would hope. See you soon."

"Yeah, very soon." he promised. He ended the call and then texted Sam. "Hungry?"

The reply came quickly. "Kitchen, 10 min."

"Salad/food?" he sent. On reading the reply to that, he sent, "I'm telling Mom."

"Burgers." said the next message from Sam.

"Good boy." he sent.


	26. Chapter 26

_Chapter 26._

In the kitchen Sam watched Castiel sorting through jars and cans on a shelf for a while before curiosity overwhelmed him and he had to ask, "Are you looking for something, Cas?"

Cas turned from his investigations and said, "No, I was just pondering how many of these foods will no longer be available if bees become extinct."

"Oh." said Sam, unsure how else to respond to that.

"Insects in general, really." Cas went on, "Their decline is disturbing. You would think bees would be safe, seeing that they provide honey on top of pollinating all this stuff. Humans can be fairly short-sighted."

"Yes, we can." said Sam.

"I mean, you all know you have to eat. You all know where your food comes from. But one day, no more bees and then most fruit and a lot of vegetables will cease to exist and everyone starves. Except Dean, obviously."

"Why except Dean?" said Sam.

"Well, he mostly eats meat and cattle will continue to pollinate other cattle."

Sam grinned. "You're forgetting pie."

Dean came in saying, "What about pie?"

"We were just discussing the loss of pollinating insects followed by the inevitable extinction of fruit pies." said Sam.

"No, there will always be pies." said Dean.

"Name a fruit not pollinated by bees." said Sam.

"They can't all be." said Dean.

"Not all, but a lot and all your basic pie fillings." said Sam, "Cas is right, a lot of our food depends on bees and other insects and their survival should be a priority."

Cas said, "And bats, of course."

Dean said, "Really, Cas? Bats?"

"Banana, mango, guava, durian, although why anyone eats durian in a world that includes mango is a mystery to me. And agave."

"Agave?" said Dean, "So, no bats, no tequila?"

"I'm afraid not." said Cas.

"Okay, important issue"

"Of course, with a nephilim soon to be born, I can't help feeling slower global disasters might be a less pressing concern." said Sam.

"Also a valid point." said Dean, "So we save the world from the nephilim and then we do something for the bees. Not sure what you can do to save insects, but we'll give it a shot. For the pies."

Sam handed him a burger. "Eat." he said.

Dean nodded his thanks and took a bite.

Sam glanced at Castiel, knowing they were both trying to work out what to say. Carefully, he said to Dean, "Do you feel better?"

"I called Jody." he said, which Sam could not help noticing was a bit of a non sequitur.

"That's good." said Sam.

"It's all fine between us now. So that's great. She understood why I wasn't entirely honest."

"Of course she did." said Sam, "She's Jody."

"Yes she is." said Dean. He looked, suddenly and disconcertingly, directly into Sam's eyes. His lips seemed to be about to form words, but didn't. Instead, he had another bite of burger.

Sam said nothing, not wanting to stop Dean from saying whatever it was he needed to say.

Cas was carefully arranging jars and cans, seemingly distracted, but Sam detected a subtle alertness. He was interested in what Dean was not saying.

Sam was a hundred percent certain that what came out of Dean's mouth as he put the burger down was not what had been on his mind a second before.

"We need to get Jody and the girls here to see the bunker. We could have them all here for a weekend, let them see what we have. Claire is gonna love the armoury."

"Yeah, we should share this place with some of the other hunters." said Sam, "It has a lot of potential."

"And we owe Jody." said Dean, "Takes in all our waifs and strays, gets hurt in every single fight, still never leaves us to fight alone."

Sam felt there was something behind the words. He said nothing. He hoped silence would encourage Dean to say more.

"We're lucky. We have some great friends." said Dean.

"Yes, we do." said Sam.

"Remember how suspicious Dad was of other hunters? Even with his best friends, he was so careful what he said."

"Yeah." said Sam, noticing how carefully Dean was picking his words.

"Bees are so much easier." said Cas out of nowhere.

"Bite me." said Dean.

Cas smiled. "Just this once, Dean, tell us the thing in your head, not the encoded version!"

Sam wondered if that might be a little too direct. Dean hesitated.

Sam said quietly, "Is there some way we can make this easier?"

Dean smiled at him. "Sam, why do you still care?"

"What?" said Sam, "We're brothers. Of course I care!"

"After all the crap I've put you through? Nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand would have ditched me years ago."

"A thousand out of a thousand would have ditched me over Ruby." said Sam.

"Cas is right, you should swap me for some bees."

"I didn't say that." said Cas, "I just said bees are easier. In a fight against demons, Dean Winchester is more use than any number of bees. He just never says what's on his mind."

"Because what's on his mind doesn't matter." said Dean.

"It matters to us." said Sam, "When I was a kid, I could go to you with anything. I could talk about all the stupid, trivial stuff that bothered me and you would listen. Now, here we are, resting between apocalypses and you've been through stuff I can't even imagine and I know there is stuff boiling around in your brain that is driving you nuts. There is nothing you can't say to me."

"There are a million things I can't say to you." said Dean.

"Like what?" said Sam.

"Like that I am terrified that one day, you'll see me for what I am and turn away in disgust. That would kill me, Sammy. I couldn't go on after that."

"You idiot." said Sam, "I know exactly what you are. Always have, always will. I'm proud of what you are. The highest praise anyone can ever give me is, 'You're just like your brother.' I know your self-image is all messed up, but I've seen you clearly my whole life. Whatever happens, whoever else walks away, I never will. We've faced too much together."

"And you don't think your image of me depends on the fact that I managed to scrabble together some food for you when you were too little to cook for yourself? Because the stuff I did for you was not great. It was barely adequate."

"I was never hungry, Dean."

"I knew as much about nutrition as I knew about ballet."

"Yeah, but you knew everything about family. You always have."

"You ran away from the family." Dean pointed out.

"You think you're the only one scared of someone ditching you in disgust?"

"I would never, never have left you alone." said Dean.

"No, I know. And I will never leave you."

Castiel looked troubled. Dean immediately said, "Cas, it's okay. We know you're subject to decisions from upstairs."

Cas nodded. "In theory, yes. I can't say I will never be dragged away, only that there is nothing, in Heaven or on Earth, that means more to me than you two."

Dean tapped Sam's arm. "Add to the Pact, whatever happens, we always stay family."

Cas added, "And when one of us goes into danger and to face certain death and the others know that and are trying to come to terms with losing him, should the certain death not occur, the person not dying should at the very least text 'not dead' to at least one of the others."

"Yes!" said Sam, surprising himself with the force of his agreement.

Dean looked from one to the other. "I think we probably should have had this conversation ten years ago."

"Ten years ago, I would never have understood it." said Cas.

Sam nodded. "I'm just glad we're having it now.


	27. Chapter 27

_Chapter 27._

After their meal, they all went to the map table. Cas took the seat at the head of the table, Sam sat again at a right angle to him and Dean sat on the other side, on the table itself. He looked at the other two and said, "I think we're making progress."

"I think so too." said Sam.

"I mean, we've talked more in 48 hours than in 20 odd years."

"Some of them very odd." said Sam.

Castiel seemed quiet. Dean waited for him to say something and then said, "Cas?"

"I agree," he said, "Of course I do. I'd just like to add something to the Pact that I know you won't want added."

"You don't know until you ask." said Dean.

"Oh, I'm pretty sure I know." said Cas.

"If it's about movie nights, we can reduce the slasher and cowboy stuff." said Dean.

"It's not about that. I think we should add a part where anyone considering something the others might consider suicidal or stupid should probably get the approval of everyone else before going ahead with it."

"Absolutely not." said Dean, knowing that was aimed mainly at him, "If something needs to be done and that something involves somebody dying so everyone else gets to live, the last thing I am going to do is ask your permission."

"What if I'm the one who wants to do the suicidal thing?" said Sam.

"That's different. Okay, if it's you or Sam, we need to talk first, but I reserve the right to ..."

"Throw yourself into the pit without consulting us?" said Cas.

"Yes, if I need to."

"No, I don't accept that." said Sam.

Dean slammed his hand on the table. "Look, I'm the head of this family ... "

"I think you'll find that's Mom." said Sam.

"Well, we'll give her five minutes to turn up and give a damn and then we'll assume she agrees with me." said Dean.

"We know she doesn't." said Cas.

"Agree with me, or give a damn?" said Dean. Cas seemed about to answer so he swiftly said, "Never mind. Not important. We need to find a compromise."

"Between you refusing to talk to us and not refusing to talk to us?" said Sam.

"How about, I agree to talk to you if I feel it won't slow things down too much?"

"That's you not talking to us, ever, about anything." said Sam.

Dean glared at him. "You know, you were much dumber when you were six. I liked that about you."

"We can't make him agree." said Cas, "The truth is, he wants to die in some heroic, unnecessary way."

"If it's needed to keep you two alive, it's not unnecessary." said Dean.

"It is to me!" said Cas.

"Me too." said Sam.

"And this is why discussion is pointless and wastes time." said Dean, "You two get all sentimental and ... "

"It's not sentimental to not want your brother to die!" said Sam.

"By dying, I could save billions of people." said Dean, "I mean, if my death is what it takes to stop the nephilim from destroying the world, that's a no-brainer."

"Maybe we'd like to consider less drastic options." said Sam.

"When did the less drastic option ever work for us?" said Dean.

"Amara?" said Sam.

"That's right." said Cas, "Your suicide mission there turned out to be unnecessary."

"But was fully discussed beforehand and you both agreed to it." said Dean.

"So when the suicide mission seems the only option, we back you even after a full discussion." said Sam.

"Which renders your objection to discussion pointless." said Cas.

"I'm not adding a promise I can't keep." said Dean.

"Surely, we all are." said Cas, "At some point, we'll mess up. We'll break part of the Pact. Hot and hasty words, like 'Never come back!' will be said by one of us to another. These things happen, especially to us."

"You're right." said Sam.

"Then why bother?" said Dean, "Why are we even trying?"

Sam stood. "Because we don't mean those things when we say them. They're the verbal equivalent of an angel blade to the eye. A flash of anger and hurtful things are said and we slam doors, literal and metaphorical and for a moment it feels like the end, but it never is. We may slam the door, but we never lock it. This Pact is our protection. This Pact is our statement of intent. It's our promise to each other, that the door will never be locked."

"We promise not to say things we know we will say in the hope that when we say them, the others will know we don't mean them?" said Dean.

"Pretty much." said Sam.

"What if we do mean them?" said Dean.

"We won't. Is there anything that Cas could do that would make you turn your back on him forever?"

"Could we ask a different question?" said Cas, looking nervously at Dean.

"Relax, Cas," said Dean, "Sam's right. There's nothing."

"So the Pact is a blueprint for our ideal situation and if sometimes, one of us falls short of the ideal, we face the fact and we fix it and we forgive them, because we know that deep down, they really wanted to do the right thing and keep to the Pact." said Sam.

"You're freaking me out, Sam." said Dean.

"By asking you to honour an agreement you'll be forgiven for breaking?" said Sam.

"No, by talking like fricking Obi Wan when just a short time ago, you were just a kid."

"Dean, I haven't been a kid in a long time."

"A long time in which you travelled with me. So how did you get so wise?"

Sam smiled. "You really think I'm wise?"

Dean remembered that smile through all the ages of Sam and saw the light shining in his eyes. A little surprised, he said, "You still care whether I think that?"


	28. Chapter 28

_Chapter 28._

Castiel raised a tentative hand. "May I ask a question?"

"Go for it." said Dean.

"I'd like you both to tell me what I can do to make life better for the two of you." said Cas.

Dean pointed at him. "No, I don't think I want to ask any more of the celestial being who has moved into our bunker to the extent that he even washes the dishes."

"I like washing the dishes." said Cas.

"Nobody likes washing the dishes." said Dean.

"No, he really does." said Sam.

"My point is that we ask quite enough of you already."

"Ask more." said Cas, "I can always say no. Ideal world, what would I do differently?"

"Be more here." said Dean, "But we can't ask that."

"Be here more often?" said Cas.

"No, that's not what he said." said Sam, "Sometimes, Dean worries that you don't see this as home."

Dean quickly interrupted. "But we know Heaven is home, hardwired into you, so we understand."

Cas nodded thoughtfully. "Heaven is, officially, my home and as you say, it is hardwired into me to be home, but it never feels like it used to. The place where I feel most at home ... the place I feel I belong, is here."

"You have almost nothing here." said Dean, "Your room is virtually empty."

"I have almost nothing at all." said Cas, "I never really had a place to put anything."

"You do now." said Dean.

"I do now." Cas confirmed, "But I don't know what I'm supposed to fill it with."

"Stuff, life, memories. Anything at all." said Dean, watching the angel's eyes for any sign that he understood.

"This means a lot to you." said Castiel.

Dean nodded. "I know there isn't much to hold you here."

"Nothing at all, beyond my love for my family here." said Cas.

"Exactly."

"Which is sort of everything I have and my reason for not hurling myself into the sun."

"You could do that?" said Dean.

"It wouldn't be great for me or for the sun." said Cas.

"Would it destroy you?" said Dean.

"Best case scenario. I don't want to think about the worst." said Cas, "But my point is that this place and the people in it, they are everything to me. You worry because I don't have much stuff here, but stuff has never been what holds me here. I come here to spend time with you and Sam, not to dust my music collection."

"Do you have a music collection?" said Dean.

"I have the tape you gave me." said Cas.

"When we were on the road all the time, we didn't have much either, but now, we can all spread out a bit more, gather some clutter ... "

"Make a home?" suggested Sam.

"Yes." said Dean, "Is there something wrong with that?"

"Nothing at all, said Sam, "I think it would be good, for all of us, especially now Mom's back."

"In a very limited, non-present sense." said Dean.

"Maybe you two could help me make my room more ... whatever it is a room should be." said Cas.

"It should be a place you want to be." said Dean, "It should have stuff that makes you feel at home and comfortable and happy. Also, we need to work on your music collection. What about hobbies?"

"Hobbies?" said Cas.

"Yeah. You should find some that interest you."

"What are your hobbies?" said Cas.

"Cartoon porn and vintage Asian erotica." said Sam.

"Restoring the old cars we inherited with this place." said Dean, "You need something to do, especially when you never sleep."

"I could help with the cars." said Cas.

"Dean doesn't want you to be useful." said Sam, "He wants you to find things you enjoy doing."

"And do them here?"

"Exactly." said Dean.

"When I could be talking to you or doing something useful to us all?" said Cas.

"Don't you want a life of your own?" said Dean.

"Don't you?" said Sam to Dean.

Dean ignored him. "Anyway," he said to Cas, "We'll help you with all of it. We just want you to be happy."

"I am very happy here." said Cas.

"Well, we want you to be happier."

"What do you want, Cas?" asked Sam, "There must be something we could do for you."

Cas seemed to consider that for a while. Eventually, he said, "To be honest, this is pretty great for me, talking about the things that really matter."

Dean stood up and walked around the table. He wasn't sure he believed that Cas wanted nothing else. The bunker was a lot to him, because he'd spent most of his life in motel rooms, trying not to notice the hair on the sheet that wasn't his colour and making an effort not to speculate about the stains on the carpet. He knew all the different smells mould and damp and dust could make. Cas lived in a small room in which the most exciting object was a lamp and he had lived in Heaven.

"If you want anything," he said, "We can try to get it for you. If you want anything to change, we can talk about it."

"Angels tend to be fairly conservative." said Cas.

Dean knew that was true. Cas considered himself a little wild if he wore a different shade of tie. He didn't want to put any pressure on Castiel, but he also feared Cas was just trying to be no trouble. He wished he had Sam's ability to say the right thing. Whatever he said, he was fairly sure it would be clumsy and sound wrong.

Cas looked worried. "You pace when you're angry." he said.

"No I don't." said Dean, "And I'm not pacing now. I'm just walking."

"So you're happy?" said Cas.

"Ecstatic." said Dean.

"Sit down, Dean." said Sam, "You're making him nervous."

"Angels don't get nervous." said Dean, but he sat down beside Cas, "There. I'm sitting."

"It's okay, Cas, we get it." said Sam, "Well, I get it. I never had a home before either. It's a little hard to know what you want when the concept is foggy. It's foggy for all of us. That's why Dean isn't happy, isn't it, Dean? It's not that you don't like what Cas is saying. It's that your head is all tied up in knots trying to figure out what he's not saying and why."

Dean opened his mouth to argue and then realised that Sam had said exactly what needed to be said. "I guess so." he said.

Sam smiled at him as if he had just said his first word. "Yeah." he said, "Dean's not angry." He watched Dean's face for a while and then said, "You're just afraid he won't tell us what will make him want to stay here. If Mom could leave ... "

Again, Dean opened his mouth, then closed it. He wanted to keep his mother out of it, but he also wanted Cas to understand.

"I don't think she left because of you." said Cas.

"She didn't leave because of the decor." said Dean.

The angel's eyes were sympathetic. That didn't help at all. Dean didn't like sympathy. He fought an urge to walk out. He tried to smile, but the curl of his lips was neither convincing nor lasting. The silence from the other two was becoming uncomfortable.

"I can't tell you what made Mary leave," said Cas, "But I don't believe she'll stay away for long."

"I don't care." said Dean, knowing he sounded like a child.

"No." said Cas without mockery.

"She owes us nothing. She can do what she likes." said Dean.

Cas nodded.

"Dean." said Sam.

"Yeah, I know. She just needs time." said Dean bitterly.

"Well, I don't need time. I don't need changes." said Cas, "This is where I want to be. I plan to stay as long as you allow me to."

"You think we'll tell you to go?" said Dean.

"I hope not." said Cas.

"Of course we won't." said Sam, "This place is as much yours as ours."

"Then you may be stuck with me forever." said Cas.

"I can live with that." said Dean, "Sam, grab some beers."


	29. Chapter 29

_Chapter 29._

While Sam was foraging for beer in the kitchen, Dean turned to Cas and said, "I've never really ... I mean, it's not something I talk about much, or think about in any intelligent way or anything."

Blue eyes looked into his as if trying to read the subtitles. He had limited time before Sam got back and he wanted, for once, to say the stuff that mattered. "If I seem irrational and angry and anxious over you, it's not because you're annoying and it's not because you did anything wrong. It's because I lose people. People I love die or walk out on me or whatever. Hurts like Hell, every time. I can't read you. I can't predict how you'll react to things. I don't know how committed you are to this place."

"To this place, not at all." said Castiel, "To you and Sam, with all my heart."

Sam came in with the beer. He glanced at Dean's face and said, "You okay, Dean?"

"Fine." said Dean. He nodded to Cas. "You're a good friend, Cas, always."

Sam was now looking at Cas. His eyes flashed back to Dean. "Did I miss something?"

Cas answered before Dean could. "Not really." he said, "I was just worrying over nothing and Dean said the right thing, as usual."

"As usual?" said Sam.

"Sam, you never said how I could make life here better for you." said Cas.

Sam gave him a beer. "Okay," he said, "I'd like you to tell me when something upsets you, whether it's Dean or me or something else. I want you to come to me and talk to me or tell Dean, if that's easier, but just don't brood alone about stuff we don't know is a problem."

"Yes!" said Dean, "Yes all the way to that!"

"I think I can do that." said Cas, "Usually, I don't want to trouble you with trivial concerns."

"We love trivial concerns." said Dean, "Trouble us!"

Cas smiled at them. "Okay, I promise."

"Can we add a no-pranks clause to the Pact?" said Sam.

"Not happening." said Dean, "I don't ask you not to drink liquidised compost heaps in the kitchen."

"Actually, you do, all the time." said Sam.

"In those very words." said Cas.

"Well, I'm not asking for a ban on them in the Pact."

"Okay, no prank ban." said Sam.

"What about fighting?" said Cas, "This started because of the angel blade incident."

"You want us to stop practicing together?" said Dean. He would miss their fights and he felt they honed his skills, especially with the angel blade, which Cas wielded with skill and flair.

"No, I don't." said Cas, "But I also don't want a repeat of what happened to your eye."

"It's okay, Cas." said Dean, "I'll make sure it never happens again. No trash talk. No lies about you and what you mean to us."

Cas turned to Sam and said, "Sam?"

"It's between you and Dean." said Sam, "I'm not about to start making rules for how you two are allowed to interact. I know I wouldn't want Dean to stop sparring with me."

"Things will be better now." said Dean, "I really think the Winchester Pact will make things better."

"Good." said Cas, "It's not like I have a lot of angels to fight with these days."

"Well, you'll always have me." said Dean, "Subject to the usual disclaimers concerning mortality."

"We could add a not dying clause." said Cas.

Sam grinned. "Cas is not happy with our mortality." he said.

"I'm not wild about it myself." said Dean, "But it's not like we can switch it off."

They all drank beer in silence for a while, then Sam said, "Do we tell Mom about any of this?"

"No." said Dean.

"Just no?" said Sam.

"I'm not trying to exclude her. It's just not something she needs to know. I also don't want her to hear anything about the angel blade thing."

"Dean's right." said Cas, "We don't need to trouble Mary with any of it."

"Okay. It just feels weird, keeping one Winchester out."

"The one Winchester who is never here long enough to do anything annoying." said Dean.

"We could add a bit about her being around more." Sam suggested.

"No. That has to be her choice. I'm not asking her or telling her or hinting or making her feel bad. She comes here or she doesn't. Her decision." He was feeling the tightness around his chest again. He really needed not to talk more about her and how she was making him focus on abandonment issues that should have been resolved decades ago.

"We could get some bees." said Cas, "In the summer, I mean."

Dean and Sam both stared at him, confused.

"I was just thinking, on top of the bunker, we could add a hive."

"Who'd clean up the poop?" said Dean, "I mean, there's like a thousand bees to a hive. That must mean a lot of bee poop. Do bees poop?" He knew he was babbling. Deliberately or otherwise, Cas had given him the perfect distraction and he was going to make the most of it.

"Bees pretty much take care of themselves." said Cas, "I have a friend that keeps them. She could let us have her next swarm, I'm sure."

"Isn't a swarm of bees dangerous?" said Dean, "I've never met a swarm I liked."

"Angry swarms caused by curses, hexes and angry angels are different." said Cas.

"Angels can send swarms of bees?" said Sam.

"Balthazar used to do that a lot." said Cas, "Bees are amazing creatures. They fly for miles to gather nectar, these tiny, vulnerable-looking things, braving wind and weather and pursuing their own personal goals and then they turn around and infallibly find their way home. And when they get there, they build the most miraculous structure and fill it with honey. If you ever want to understand life, watch the bees."

"Well, I know you've wanted a pet for some time." said Dean, "Bees sound pretty low-maintenance." He heard what Cas was trying to tell him and it did help, to think of the bunker as the Winchester hive. He hoped his eyes could tell Cas what he was not prepared to say in front of Sam.

Sam still seemed a little confused by the whole bee tangent, but he nodded and said, "Fine, bees. At least we'll get free honey. We don't need to add that to the Pact, though."

"Do you think you have enough to draft something out?" said Dean.

Sam nodded. "Yeah. I'll work on it in the library. I'll need some peace and quiet."

"Is that your subtle way of telling us to go away?" said Dean.

"I didn't think it was that subtle." said Sam.

Dean stood up and tapped Cas on the shoulder. "Come on, buddy. Let's leave the Man of Letters to his work. Wanna try a fight that doesn't go too far?"

"Sounds good." said Cas.


	30. Chapter 30

_Chapter 30._

For librarians, the Men of Letters had set up a fine space for fighting with plenty of room for manoeuvre. Dean felt good to have an angel blade in his hand and Castiel, similarly armed, in front of him. It was how things should be. They were warriors. Battle, real or not, was their natural habitat. He swung the angel blade slowly, enjoying the perfect balance. "Ready?" he said to Cas.

"Ready." Cas replied.

Cas easily blocked the first strikes. He was quick and he was clever and he had been fighting angels long before mankind made it onto the scene.

Of course, the thing with angels was, they were predictable, especially to one of their own. They fought a certain way and they did it well, but innovation was not one of their strengths. Humans were adaptable, creative and frankly dirty fighters.

Dean distracted Cas with the movement he was expecting, then grabbed at his coat with the other hand. Cas quickly broke free, but he nodded his approval of the move. A moment later, his blade was heading for Dean's throat, but Dean leapt back and avoided any threat from it.

"If you took off the coat, you'd have a lot more freedom to move." said Dean, circling as Cas circled.

"Yes, but how often do I get a chance to change for combat?" said Cas. He made an attempt to close the distance between them, but Dean was quick to move away. Cas twirled his blade with an air of confidence.

Dean lunged forward and Cas retreated with a swirl of his coat. They looked at each other. Cas had superior strength and skill and Dean was well aware of both. When the fight was not in play, Cas had a tendency to kick Dean's ass with little effort, although, Dean felt he put up a better fight than most of the angel's human opponents. He feinted to the right and Cas was momentarily fooled, but he recovered in time to block the attack from the left.

"If there are ever new angels," said Cas, "We should borrow you to help train them."

"Yeah, like you need help with that." said Dean, trying for another attack and being rebuffed.

"Fighting with you would teach them a lot." said Cas, "I learn from you all the time." He lashed out at Dean's arm, but Dean dodged away.

Another attack and another were equally evaded. "Cas, are you holding back on me?" said Dean.

"No." said Cas. As if to prove the point, he thrust his blade towards Dean, who stepped back.

"You are." said Dean, "And I know you always do, a little, but this time, you're really not trying."

"I'm sorry." said Cas.

"The eye thing, right? We need to put that behind us."

"It's clearly a lot easier for you." said Cas, making a weak attack that Dean barely needed to dodge.

"I told you, there won't be any trash talk. I won't provoke you." Even as he said it, he had to resist the urge to say something that might stir up some anger and get him the fight he wanted. He wondered if he wanted Cas to hurt him again, then wondered why he was overthinking like that. "I don't want things to be weird." he said.

"Neither do I." said Cas.

"Then fight like you mean it." said Dean.

Cas made three swift strikes, each of which almost got past Dean's blade. "Better?" he asked.

"Better." said Dean. He raised his blade to Castiel's chin, but Cas easily knocked it aside. He tried again and the angel's left hand gripped his wrist and forced his arm down. Instead of resisting, he threw himself down and used the momentum to break free. Before he could stand, he had to fend off Castiel's blade twice. That was more like it.

He got to his feet and only just got clear of another blow. He kept moving, being as erratic as possible, making Cas guess his next move. Cas was smiling, clearly starting to enjoy the fight and maybe to relax a little. Dean offered half an attack and Cas put too much effort into resisting it and moved forward with a lot less control than he should have. Dean's blade almost touched his chest. Cas jerked away, but it still felt like a victory to Dean.

Sparring with Cas always reminded him of training with his father. At first, his dad had let him win sometimes and even knowing that had not removed the thrill of victory. Later, John had made fewer and fewer concessions to Dean's youth and size and had fought harder. The time had come when Dean could sometimes win fairly and those fights were the ones that had stayed in his memory. Those were the ones that still made him smile. Cas was a vastly superior opponent, but sometimes, Dean got a genuine advantage. Sometimes, he even won.

The touch of cold metal on his arm reminded him to stay out of his head and focus on his body. He knocked the blade aside with his own and then made a series of fast, precise assaults that Cas managed to repel. Their eyes met and Dean grinned. "I'm glad we can still do this." he said.

"I'd miss it." said Cas.

"Me too." said Dean. He stabbed forward with his blade and Cas parried it almost contemptuously.

"Are you holding back?" he said.

Dean's next few moves made it very clear that he wasn't. They were both getting into the fight now, the awkwardness and guilt of the past couple of days disappearing as their thoughts became reactions. The battle became more physical and more intense and the blades became less important as they grappled, tripped and shoved each other, angelic artistry and human ingenuity combined in both their fighting styles. They had been together a long time. They had taught each other well.


	31. Chapter 31

_Chapter 31._

Sam went through his assembled text a dozen times, editing, moving chunks around, trying out a different phrasing here and there. He wanted it to be something they could all agree to, with nothing that would seem aimed too closely at one person, apart from those parts that each had already accepted.

He resisted the temptation to use legal jargon and kept it as plain and simple as he could, but his legal training helped him to avoid ambiguity and loopholes. He was happy that it would be a serviceable document, clear, concise and competent. That, more than verbose obscurity, was the mark of a good lawyer.

It did, however, give him a brief reminder of the life he could have had, the one he had thought he wanted. He could have been a lawyer now, perhaps a good one, working his way towards the peak of his career. He might have had a wife and kids and he'd have told those kids, "You can be whatever you want to be." He would have meant it too. He would remember the mistakes his own father had made and he would have avoided them. Of course, he would not have told his kids about his own, messed up childhood. Their only clue to that would have been their weird, drifter uncle, if he chose to keep in touch and maybe, if he had lived, their weirder grandfather. Sam would have told them nothing about the evil in the world.

Years ago, he would have seen that as a pleasant picture. If he'd been given a straight choice, that night in 2005, when Dean came to find him, he would have chosen the life without monsters, but now, he was glad he hadn't.

Without hunting, he and Dean would have continued to drift apart. Dean would have found his love of the law unfathomably dull and he would have thought Dean was crazy to choose to fight things most people didn't know existed when he could have walked away. The closeness wrought of their weird childhood had almost died by that point. Much as he loved Dean, he could not share his commitment to the life, when it was also a surrender to the complete control of their father.

The words on the screen blurred a little at the thought. He had been such an angry kid and he had reason to be. All he had wanted was a normal life, a normal family. Instead, if he wanted the family, he had to sign up to the quest for revenge, not just on the thing that had killed the mother he never really knew, but on evil everywhere. He'd wanted Dean and their father to get their revenge or at least some kind of closure, but he could never share their anger and hatred because he didn't know their grief.

Normal life had seemed like such a wonderful prize. He had always assumed that, sometime later, Dean would seek him out and they would laugh about past quarrels and Dean would be proud of him. He knew now that Dean's fight would never be over and although he might care about civilians and help them all he could, Dean would never want to share their lives. It was because Sam had gone with him that night and stayed with him after that they had what they had. They had fought together, died together, so often that nothing could ever come between them.

Sam had spent years thinking of himself as a future lawyer, not a hunter. Dean was the hunter. In some ways, that made things easier, because he didn't feel he had to compete with Dean. He was just helping Dean to find Dad, to get out of the demon deal, to get out of Hell, to resist Michael and Lucifer ... But somewhere along the way, it had become his hunt, his fight and now, he wouldn't change it if he could.

That, he knew, meant the world to Dean. Dean had tolerated his doubts and vacillations. He had allowed him to pretend he was not born to hunt. He had accepted the constant making of other plans that drove him nuts, because no normal life would ever have room for him in it. When Sam had abandoned all that and accepted that he was forever a hunter, he had seen the relief in Dean's eyes. In a world full of scary things, many of which had him top of their hit list, the only thing Dean truly feared was being alone, losing his brother or his brother's love.

Sam read the first line aloud, "First, whatever happens, we are family and there is nothing that can ever change that, nothing we can do or say to end it." A tear ran down his cheek. It had taken him decades to understand that line, only a moment or two to write it.

The Winchester Pact was many things, a statement of intent, as he had told the others, an attempt, against the odds, to stop them all from repeating the same mistakes, a way to show Cas that he was their brother and a way to tell Dean that now they all got what he had been trying to tell them for years, but above all, it was a declaration of love. It was each of them saying to the other two, "No matter what, I am here for you." and it mattered to Sam more than anything else he had ever written, which was why actually putting it into words was so hard.


	32. Chapter 32

Chapter 32.

Both Dean and Castiel had dropped their blades during the fight and they were now on the floor, brawling like two drunks in a saloon.

Dean grabbed at the lapel of Castiel's coat and tried to hold him down, but the angel's knee suddenly rose and pushed him aside. He hit the polished wooden floor and drew a sharp breath before getting up.

One of the angel blades was just a few feet away, but as he glanced at it, Cas threw out a leg to trip him, he fell onto the ground again, but was on his knees and soon rose.

"You fight like a human." he said.

"Thanks." said Cas, standing up. He moved towards Dean, but Dean hurled himself across the floor to fall within reach of the blade. He grasped it and lifted it to ward off attack. Cas smiled. "You fight like an angel."

Dean grinned. "Break?" He put both angel blades on a table.

Cas reached behind a stack of javelins and brought out a bottle of whisky. He handed it to Dean as he came over. "Do you think he'll add anything to the Pact about limiting your drinking?" said Cas.

Dean shook his head. "No, he gets it." He offered the bottle to Cas, who shook his head. "I don't have a drink problem." he said, "I have a life problem, which I take the edge off with drink." He looked at Castiel for a moment and said, "You're not even sweating."

"No." said Castiel.

"One day, I will make you break a sweat."

"Angels don't sweat." said Castiel.

"I just need to up my game." said Dean. He took another gulp of whisky.

They sat on a bench, side by side. "Are there things you aren't telling Sam?" said Cas.

Dean chuckled. "Dude, I hardly know where to start."

"I don't mean all the usual things, I mean Pact things."

"Meaning?" said Dean.

"Meaning, is there something I can do that you don't want in the Pact?"

"Like what?" said Dean.

"I don't know. Anything."

"You know, we barely touched on your issues."

"I barely have issues." said Cas.

"Really? So there's nothing you want from us?" said Dean.

"Other than being allowed to be a part of the family? Nothing at all."

"Because if there is something, we can call him now and get it added."

"You know why angels hate you so much?" said Cas.

"Yeah, I made you fall." said Dean.

"No, that's not it. They hate you because you're my friend."

"They don't want you to have friends?"

"My friend and not theirs." said Cas.

"If they were your friends, I'd be their friend." said Dean.

Cas stared at the floor and shook his head. "You don't understand. They're jealous, Dean, because I have your friendship and they don't."

"Have you told them what a crappy friend I am?" said Dean.

"You're not a crappy friend."

"How many times have I gotten you killed?" said Dean.

Cas ignored the question. "Do you know how it feels, to come here and know that I am welcome and wanted?" he asked, looking into Dean's eyes.

Dean thought about it for a while. "I know how it feels to see you come in here and know that you choose to spend time with us." he said, "Sam can't help being my brother. He was born a Winchester, poor kid. But you? You choose to be one of us. You're my brother because you want to be and believe me, that means something."

His phone vibrated. He read the text Sam had sent. "Pact ready."

"Come on," he said, "Sam's finished.

"He's quick." said Cas.

"Quick? My brother is a frigging genius!" said Dean.


	33. Chapter 33

_Chapter 33._

Sam had printed three copies of the Pact and gave one each to Cas and Dean. They all read in silence, each carefully examining what they would be agreeing to.

"The Winchester Pact.

First, whatever happens, we are family and there is nothing that can ever change that, nothing we can do or say to end it.

We acknowledge that we will not always uphold the letter or the spirit of this pact and that we will make mistakes, have bad days, suffer misunderstandings and otherwise mess up. Knowing this, we will forgive each other's mistakes and lapses.

It isn't easy being a Winchester. We will try to remember that and accord each other a little tolerance and understanding when under pressure.

We are door-slammers by nature and may say things we do not mean in the heat of the moment. The door may be slammed, but it will never be locked. There is always a way back and we will get to it as quickly as we can.

Anyone is allowed to say he is fine, okay, great or whatever, true or not, the first time of asking. If one of us asks a second time, he is waiving his right to protection from the horrible reality and the other will tell him the truth. Anyone who asks the second time is declaring himself to be ready to hear the facts and respond appropriately. Knowing that none of us finds such revelation easy, he will respect the confidential nature of the information and the difficulty of expressing it.

We are allowed, indeed, encouraged, to say we are not okay at any time and for any reason. We promise to try to be honest about it and trust that our brothers will not mock us or resent us for it.

On the matter of Hell, Sam and Dean both undertake to talk openly and honestly with Castiel about their time in Hell with the understanding that he will not reveal what is said to anyone else. Both will make every effort to process the trauma and heal from it.

Castiel promises to be more open with Sam and Dean about his own troubles and not to struggle alone when there is no need to. In return, Sam and Dean will offer their full support whenever he needs it.

The past is in the past and is forgiven. We have all made mistakes and we have all paid for them. Ours is not a life in which we can afford to bear grudges or blame each other and our brotherhood is too important to be undermined by the things we cannot change. If we find ourselves returning to old issues in the midst of an argument, we will remind ourselves that the past is over and dealt with.

Both human Winchesters will remember that angels are less emotionally resilient and more easily hurt than they are and will consider how words may hurt if chosen unwisely. Every attempt will be made to avoid causing Castiel undue pain.

Castiel will remember that humans cannot easily comprehend his thought processes or state of mind and will try to communicate clearly when something is causing him pain or disquiet.

Nobody will provoke a fight because it is easier than expressing emotions. Instead, we will make an effort to be honest about our feelings and if we cannot, we will state honestly that we are struggling.

We will communicate with each other. We will not assume that our brothers know something we have not said. If someone has a reason to believe we may be in trouble or dead and that is not the case, we will contact him in any way possible and tell him it is not the case. We will keep in contact with each other via prayer, phone, internet, carrier pigeons, mail or magic, but we will keep in touch. If we are dead, we will make every effort to let the others know by whatever means are available.

From time to time, one of us may need to leave for a while and be alone. Whilst absent from the others, he will make every effort to stay in contact, via Jody Mills or Donna Hascum, if necessary. When he feels able to return home, he can do so with the assurance that we will understand the need for a temporary absence.

We will talk about what is bothering us, whether or not we believe our brothers can offer any solution. We will not hide behind the idea of protecting each other from anxiety or pain. We acknowledge that there is no greater pain than being cut out of our brothers' lives for our own good (or for any other excuse).

We will leave the bunker sometimes for reasons other than hunting. We will sometimes take some time off (apocalypses permitting). We will spend quality time together and with the rest of the family (family here includes all family, blood, chosen, accidental, adopted, acquired and just plain followed us home). We will sometimes express love and affection in ways other than shouting it during an argument or whispering it with our last breath.

Sam promises not to put Dean under more pressure than he has to and not to ask for more than Dean can give. At all times, Sam will try to remember that Dean gave up more for him in the first twenty years of his life than anyone else has given up in a lifetime.

Dean promises to value his life as Sam and Castiel value it and not to throw it away for no reason.

Castiel promises to make more of a home in the bunker and to remember that he is part of the family and that he matters to us.

We all commit to the future of this family, of hunting and of the world. We undertake to do whatever we can to strengthen the community of hunters, to ensure that the bunker serves as many people as possible and to guarantee the survival of our family (see definition above) for as long as possible. Whilst we are all willing to sacrifice our lives in the service of humanity or its allies, we will ensure that any losses are a last resort, not a first thought.

Signed: "

Sam waited for the others to finish reading and then said, "Everyone happy?"

"Are you sure about the part just for you?" said Dean, "Because I didn't ask you to add that and I don't expect you to do it."

"I added it for a very good reason." said Sam, "Are you happy with the part for you?"

Dean nodded. "I'm ready to sign."

"Then let's all sign each copy." said Sam.

They did, adding a row of signatures, "Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Castiel."

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Just Castiel?" he said.

Cas looked at him and then tentatively added, "Winchester."

Dean nodded. "That's better."

Castiel's phone interrupted. He looked at it. "I'd better go. A possible lead on Kelly Kline."

"Want me to go with you?" said Dean.

"No," said Cas, "It's probably another red snapper."

"Herring." said Sam and Dean together.

"Well, whatever. I'll call you when I've checked it out."

"I need coffee." said Sam, "Dean, you want one too?"

"Yeah, thanks." said Dean.

Sam left the library.

"You sure you don't need back-up?" said Dean to Cas.

"I'm sure. I'll probably be back tomorrow. And when I come back, Dean, as soon as possible after I come back, you can choose the time, the place and the circumstances. We can go for a drive or we can send Sam to watch a movie or anything you like, but we're going to talk about Hell."

Dean nodded. "Yeah, okay. I'll try."


	34. Chapter 34

_Chapter 34._

In the middle of the night, Dean was woken by a knock on his door. "Sam?" he said.

Sam opened the door and looked in. "Sorry to bother you so late. It's just ..." He took a deep breath, "Dean, I'm not okay."

Dean turned on the light. "Bad dreams?"

"Yeah." said Sam.

"Hell stuff?" said Dean, sitting up.

"Yeah. I'd talk to Cas, but ..."

"Yeah. So, you can't talk to me?"

"Not really. Sorry. I shouldn't have woken you."

"It's okay, Sammy. Just tell me how I can help. What do you need?"

Sam looked troubled. "I don't know."

"Think about it. There must be some way I can help." said Dean

Sam thought. Eventually, he said, "This will sound really dumb."

"Good. Dumb, I can relate to. High school dropout, remember?"

"Don't do that, okay?" said Sam, "I hate when you do that."

"Speak, Sammy!" said Dean.

"Okay. There's just one problem with the bunker. I sometimes miss the motel rooms."

"The ambience, the aroma?"

"My brother being just feet away." said Sam.

Dean smiled at him. "Yeah, I miss that too. Sleepless nights are a little less lonely when you have someone to whine at. Look, there's a room down the hall with two beds. How about we gather our stuff and move in there for the night?"

"You wouldn't mind?" said Sam.

"No, kid. It's what I'm here for, remember?"

Sam nodded. "You always have been, haven't you? Thanks, Dean."

"Thanks for making me feel a little less helpless." said Dean, "But you have to promise me, when Cas gets back, you'll tell him what you can't tell me."

"How about you?"

"He already made me promise." said Dean.

"Wow." said Sam, "The Pact may actually work."

"Yeah, if talking can ever fix anything." said Dean. He got out of bed and grabbed his pillows. "Fetch your stuff. And I want the bed by the door."

"What's coming to get me is in my head." said Sam.

"Don't worry. I'll protect you from that too."

Sam went to get his things. Dean gathered his clothes for the morning and picked up his shoes, then went to the room down the hall. He looked at the two beds and smiled. His kid brother still needed him and here was a real, practical way for him to protect Sam from the horrors of Hell that still lingered in his head.

It would help him too. After a turbulent couple of days, there was something very comforting about them sharing a room as they had for so many years. Dean loved his room, but he couldn't deny that he often missed Sam. He wasn't looking forward to discussing Hell with Cas. He believed he would have a better chance of sleep if he had his brother close and in need of his protection. It felt right. It felt like he had a purpose.

Sam arrived with his stuff. "Thanks for this, Dean." he said, putting his pillows onto the bed.

Dean nodded. "No problem. Thanks for telling me you're not okay. If this helps, we can make this room our permanent motel room."

"Won't Mom find that weird?" said Sam.

"Sam, you voluntarily drink wheatgrass and kale. Mom knows you're weird."

_The End._

_Next Story: The Infernal Variations._


End file.
